


Shelter From The Day

by YesBothWays



Series: The Even-More-Secret Secret Life of Agent Margaret Carter [1]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/F, Feminist Themes, Femslash, First Time, Lesbian Sex, OTP Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-03-19 20:50:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 53,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3623850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YesBothWays/pseuds/YesBothWays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With her injuries from fighting Dottie smarting terribly, Peggy returns home to the Griffith to find Angie.  As they both transition from their previous jobs and residence at the Griffith, Peggy and Angie decide to move in together and also towards having a love affair with each other.  Their relationship with one another brings through a number of changes in how they view their pasts and their futures.  </p><p>This is sort of a playful, elegant story where both Peggy and Angie go through personal transformations as a response to the love that they give to and receive from each another.  Their romance in this version includes the classics of flirting, teasing, life planning, and intimate dialogue.  There are also flowers and an apron.  There's lots of sex by the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Peggy's Desire For Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bittergreens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittergreens/gifts).



> This is a very queer love story that takes Peggy and Angie through their journey from deciding they want each other to communicating it to acting on it to dealing with the issues it provokes for both of them. I love Agent Carter. However, I feel that it offers me feminism much like gummy snacks offer me "real fruit." This story comprises my current vision of the most feminist version of the show I can see in my own, nowadays very queer imagination – a world where people get to have real, personal sexualities, like in Sarah Waters' stories. If you're not really here for the story, just to borrow a cup of sugar, jump to the chapter title with that same name.
> 
> This story is in part for Rowan Ellis, who inspired me with her "Queering Agent Carter" video on youtube. Rowan, I queered it, sister, just as hard as I could. Still so much further to go!
> 
> This story is also for bittergreens, my dearest true love and lifelong Gaytriarch. Your light will change the world.

_We women share the dream_

_Of a shelter made_

_Where by night, we shall_

_Find we may put away_

_All those acts, by which_

_We must sustain the day._

           

            Peggy buttoned up her shirt, careful not to roll her shoulders back more than she had need. The pain pricked like quills when she moved her body too freely. She had "gone cold" as her former coach would have said, and now she felt the pain she could not feel hours before precisely and vividly, as if to make up for the lost time.

            The doctor had gone for a moment. She stood up and took a long look at the x-rays of her body before leaving. She looked at the line of her scapula to confirm that she agreed that it was not fractured. She thought he was right.

            She stood and stared then a moment at the architecture of her own inner body. As she tucked in her shirt, she felt very aware of the shifting of her ribs as her eyes moved along the lattice of their arches as they appeared there before her, a strange foggy white emerging from a black background like the impression of a woman being formed from the nothing before creation. She pressed her hands to her sides a moment and marveled at how her body could seem at once so frail and yet so solid.

            The door opened, and the doctor peeked in to see if Peggy were dressed. He came in and offered her a script that she would not fill, which she took with an offer of thanks and folded politely. He had her file in his other hand. Peggy turned back to her x-rays.

            "If you're ready, miss," he said. His tone seemed harsh. Peggy turned back to see the look on his face.

            He was obviously annoyed at her for looking over the x-rays of her body herself. Peggy felt a tension flicker in her jaw. _Choose your battles,_ she thought to herself, a thought which came to her still in her father's steady voice. When she was younger, she'd understood that to mean not to take on a fight you couldn't win. Now, she understood it to mean you should take only the fights that might win you the war, even if it meant you died. This fight was far too paltry to hold her focus given what she'd been through that day, which had stretched now into a second day, actually.

            As she went to get her bag, Peggy's thoughts turned, strangely, to going home, as they had been doing of late, particularly on days when she nearly died. She walked out of the room without bothering to share any words with the doctor, who stood scribbling some finishing notes distractedly in her file. She sifted through her own feelings that had just emerged, beckoning her homewards.

            Margaret Carter had not felt a distinct longing for any home since she was a girl of twelve years old. She felt contained within the boundaries of her own skin. Everything else, everything around her, was just trappings. Homes, clothes, even friends and co-workers were interchangeable. Quite suddenly, at nearly thirty, the sensation had appeared in her life anew. Somehow, the feelings were attached to her most current best friend, Angie. Whenever something happened now that rattled her utterly, she felt as if a homing beckon just under her ribs wanted to guide her to wherever Angie could be found. She'd believed yesterday that she would not see Angie again for months, at least, possibly years. It was not the unpredictability of life, but the steadiness of this new instinct she felt that gave her a gentle feeling of astonishment.

            She opened the door to the waiting room and was surprised to find Jarvis waiting for her still. He sat with a strangely boyish posture with his hands on his knees. He stood promptly when she came out.

            "I'm quite well, Mr. Jarvis. All parts in tact, as I predicted," she said.

            "Yes, very well. I'm glad to hear that," he said. He put on his hat. "Let me escort you back to your residence."

            "A taxi can do me just as well," she said.

            "I will ignore that seemingly unintentional comparison between how much you value my presence at your side and that of the crass specter of a New York cabbie in the seat before you," he said, as he opened the door.

            Peggy relented, as she could see he had been worried, and she found it both annoying and also very kind. She would eventually have to come to see Jarvis as a friend, she felt. Although with their history and Stark between them, that would likely take a considerable amount of time.

            They drove quietly through the streets of New York for a while. Peggy tried not to lean too much into the seat, which kept her a bit distracted at first. It was getting on towards late morning. She knew she would feel tired soon. She had not felt herself come down from the happenings of the past day yet. The only sign that she'd missed a night of sleep was how tired her body felt, a sort of ache. She wondered why Jarvis did not look more tired. Perhaps he was used to being harassed at all hours by Stark's relational demands.

            "This is for you, Miss Carter," Jarvis said. He handed her an envelope. Peggy recognized Stark's handwriting.

            "Is this money?" she said. She saw him blanch, which indicated that it was.

            "You know I'm not at liberty to let you refuse," he said. Peggy dropped the envelope on the seat beside her. She determined to ignore it. He handed her a piece of paper from his coat pocket.

            "You're also invited to stay at one of Mr. Stark's smaller houses for as long as you would like, free of charge, of course. He picked this one out for you especially," he said. Peggy took the slip and read the address.

            "I may have to take him up on that given the circumstances," Peggy said with mild irritation.

            She had spoken briefly with Daniel about her living situation, as she was about to head to the doctor's office to wait to be x-rayed. He had called and spoken with her landlady to try to negotiate Peggy's continuation on the lease despite the disruption to the collective calm she had inadvertently caused that day. She thought it rather kind of him to think of it in the midst of everything. He said she could go back without the police being called at least.

            "I got you a week longer there," he said, "If you want it. That's all I could get. I honestly think that was the hardest case I've ever had."

            "Thank you very much," Peggy had said, sincerely impressed he'd managed that much.

            He smiled in his soft, shy way. She determined not to make a joke about him making a case of herself. She simply took the favor he offered now. She felt funny that in the moment he'd held her at gunpoint, she'd realized how much she trusted him. He held now Peggy's finest estimation of a man in her mind, that of a true ally. She would not feel him removed from her heart anytime soon. It would take a great deal of doing.

            She read the address on the slip Jarvis had given her. And she tried not to think of how Stark used the place. He seemed to consider hotels beneath him, at least in New York. Perhaps he found this expensive practice of owning empty homes more discreet.

            "It is a bit far from the theater district. But it's only a transfer of one line," Jarvis said.

            "Is that right?" Peggy said, distractedly.

            "Yes," Jarvis mumbled, and Peggy felt from his tone that he felt she hadn't quite gotten what he meant by this tidbit. "Yes, it's quite safe," he added.

            "Thank you, Mr. Jarvis," Peggy said, trying to be more patient, although she had no idea what he had in mind with these comments or why he thought this place would be best for her, but she did trust his motivations. She found it funny, almost, all this being looked after since yesterday.

            "I'll do quite well, I'm sure," she said. They pulled to stop.

            "Give me a call anytime this week. I can let you in and give you keys," he said, as Peggy came around to the side window. She shook his hand through the open window. He gave one of his strange smiles and worked the gears of the car.

 

            Peggy came in and found a number of women seated in the front room. Breakfast had been over for more than an hour. They would not normally be gathered there this late. They were still excited from the happenings of the day before, she realized. Angie was among them, and she popped up and came over at once.

            "Oh, my God, Peg," she said. "I didn't know if I'd ever see you again. Are you real?"

            Angie put her arms around Peggy. She looked relieved and delighted. One hand landed on her shoulder blade and made Peggy flinch and give a small sound. Angie released her at once.

            "Are you all hurt? Am I hurting you? Did those coppers or feds or whoever they were rough you up?" Angie asked, her mood turning to one of concern and then anger in all of two seconds.

            "No, no. It was Dottie, actually, who roughed me up," Peggy said.

            "Come again?" Angie said, as she furrowed her brows. "She's gone missing, by the way."

            "Yes, believe me, I know, quite. I'll tell you all about it," Peggy said, "But first, you don't have anything to eat do you?" Some of the other women had come and were inviting Peggy back, though a few hung back nervously.

            "I've got four blueberry muffins and a quarter of an apple pie," Angie said. "The whole lot is yours if you want it. We can still pilfer tea and milk from the breakfast cart." That was a stroke of lucky. The drink cart remained each day until its contents were finished around midday. They were not allowed to take them upstairs, but it didn't matter. Peggy could hardly imagine being given trouble over something so small after all she had done of late.

            Several other women offered Peggy part of their own secretly stashed foods, which she thought very kind. She received quite a welcome, especially for a recently wanted woman. She thought to wonder if there'd been posters put up for her around the city and had the rather comforting thought that Daniel would been in charge of this and would have remembered to have them all taken down. She would not likely be subject to an attempted citizens' arrest in the middle of the street.

            "You want company or quiet?" Angie asked. Peggy's back hurt, and she felt the very beginning of how tired she was settling in on her now that she was home.

            "I promise to fill you all in as much as I can at breakfast tomorrow," Peggy said to the others. Everyone else detached themselves from the two of them immediately. Peggy took Angie's arm. "Keep me company for a bit?"

            "Sure thing, honey," Angie said, and she added as a joke, "You look like you've had a bit of a rough day, and it's barely ten o'clock."

            Angie tucked a bottle of milk in her bag, and Peggy just took a cup of tea in her hand, carrying it on a saucer. They passed Ms. Fry on their way upstairs. For whatever reason, Peggy felt more self-conscious about her arm being linked through Angie's than the tea she was carrying in her hand. Both were drops in the bucket of all that Ms. Fry thought she ought to feel embarrassed about.

"Ladies," she said. She turned back to her book without another word. Peggy was relieved, and thought perhaps Daniel had done more to calm or at least subdue her wrath than he had implied.

            Up in her room, Peggy impressed Angie by eating all the food she was offered in short order. She did not really feel full, but she felt less hollow. She also felt her exhaustion start to settle on her, which meant she'd had enough to eat to get to sleep soon. She felt a deep sense of relief, the sort that reminded her of the patterns of her life during the war.

            "I thought we should never make it past Ms. Fry," Peggy said.

            "She's just biding her time until next week," Angie said.

            "I should be out before then," Peggy said.

            "Yeah, me too, I hope," Angie said.

            "What do you mean?" Peggy asked, suddenly concerned. Angie gave a sort of shrug.

            "I got the boot along with you," she said with a casual, sarcastic sort of smile.

            "No!" Peggy said. She grew really distressed.

            Angie sat on the bed beside her and reached to touched her shoulder. Peggy felt torn between an exaggerated instinct to lean into the touch, now that she was really crashing and felt rather vulnerable, and the flinching impulse to draw her back away from a touch that came anywhere near her injuries.

            "I'm so sorry, Angie," Peggy said.

            "It's alright, Peg," Angie said. Her voice conveyed an authenticity and depth that gave Peggy pause. She felt it clear that Angie felt there were more important things in life, and their relationship was one of them. She always felt this way with Angie.

            "I got about a million questions, but I guess they can wait," Angie said.

            "I might be able to do a handful now if you like. I feel I owe you some answers," Peggy said.

            "You don't owe me, but I'll take 'em," Angie said. "Are you back for good? You in the clear?" she asked Peggy first.

            "Yes. Amazingly. Things worked out rather well, actually, it would seem," Peggy said.

            "So those guys aren't going to come drag you out of here again? They're not after you?" Angie asked.

            "No. At least, not in the literal sense," Peggy said.

            "Are you and Stark going to be an item now?" Angie asked. Peggy sat quiet for a moment.

            "I'm sorry. Could you repeat your question? I must have blacked out for a moment, because I thought you asked me something entirely insane," Peggy said. To her relief, Angie laughed heartily.

            "I'm sorry. I was just seeing if you were really awake," Angie said.

            "I am awake. I'm sorry I can't be more of a presence," Peggy said.

            "No. I didn't meant that. I just… I feel inclined to tease. I guess my feelings were hurt about you disappearing for, you know, forever yesterday. I've got to tease you to know you're really back," Angie said.

            "Then fire away," Peggy said. "I'll try not to be too sensitive given my current state."

            Angie did not actually go on to tease her anymore. Instead, she just moved around to lean back into the pillows propped against the headboard beside Peggy. She linked both her arms around Peggy's arm.

            "Guess now I know about your secret life, too," Angie said. Peggy gave a small huff of laughter. "We're on equal terms now." Peggy turned her hand over to hold Angie's. "What are you going to tell the others?" Angie asked.

            "I'll figure it out tomorrow morning before I go down," Peggy said. "We're trained in these things, as a matter of fact."

            "Among other things?" Angie said. Peggy sat quiet for a moment. She felt deeply exhausted and also more relaxed, and so it took her a moment to gather the gist of Angie's tease.

            "Angie," Peggy said in false admonishment. Now that she had Peggy on board, Angie laughed. She grew falsely serious.

            "Peg, I gotta confess something," she said.

            "What is that?" Peggy said. She could tell from Angie's tone it was going to be a joke, but she also felt a pang of anxiety streak through her chest. She must really be tired, she felt.

            "I thought you were a really high class calling girl for months after we first met," she said.

            "You're joking," Peggy said. Angie was quiet for just a moment.

            "No, honey. I'm not," she said. Her tone was quite genuine.

            "You cannot be serious!" Peggy said. She went so rigid that it lifted her up off the pillows, which sent a sort of creeping prickle of pain crawling across her back. She had turned towards Angie, and against her will, she had to lean back slowly. Her incredulity was met by a sort of casual smirk and a shrug from Angie. Peggy could see she was very amused. She had anticipated such a response.

            "What? I mean, come on. How much less likely is a government spy? It wasn't meant to be an insult," she said.

            "That is entirely absurd," Peggy said.

            "Yeah," Angie said. "I sort of figured that out pretty quick. I never figured out what was going on, though. Girl's gotta do what she's gotta do to make it, you know?"

            "Hah!" Peggy huffed.

            "There are worse jobs," Angie said with a shrug. Peggy's back had settled down now.

            "Angelina Martinelli, I will have you know that I have hardly even been kissed. And you suspected that I escort men and make a living off my ability to… well, to perform predetermined sex acts?"

            "What's 'predetermined?'" Angie asked.

            "I mean to do what they order, like there's a… cultivated… Peggy sex menu." Angie burst out laughing.

            "Yeah, Peg. I pictured it _just like_ my job, but with sex. 'And will that be with kissing or without, sir?'" Angie said in a mock English accent.

            "Stop that! Or I'll send you away and leave you guessing about every other question until tomorrow," Peggy said.

            "How cruel," Angie joked. She squeezed Peggy's arm tighter. "Look, I am sorry, about that. I figured out I was probably wrong real fast, a long time ago now. I didn’t mean anything by it. I thought secret mistress for the shortest while, but by then I knew you better, and even that just seemed like something you'd find beneath your dignity."

            "I should hope so," Peggy said. Her tone conveyed an exaggerated offense.

            "Sorry, Peg," Angie said, her voice still mild and full of humor. "I guess I just… sort of automatically associated you with sex. I'm sure it has more to do with me than it does with you."

            Peggy's thoughts shifted around the comment for a moment, unable to break it apart in her sleepiness. She found herself saying without deciding to first, "Well, I suppose that's flattering, really." She felt pacified now. They sat in silence a moment.

            "I just have one more question, and the rest I can wait on," Angie said.

            "What's that?" Peggy said. Her tone was inviting. She sat with her eyes closed, but her mind felt quite attentive. She tried to be prepared for anything.

            "What does 'hardly been' kissed mean?" Angie asked. Peggy laughed, and she felt more than heard Angie laugh with her.

            "Well," Peggy said, rubbing her eyes. "I guess it means that, I'm just not sure I've ever experienced a kiss that quite matches what a real kiss would be as I picture it in my mind."

            Peggy always tried to think of kissing men on the job as something other than kissing – a maneuver, as she thought of it. She knew it was to distance herself from how annoying it was, but given her knowledge and experience with other spies, she was sure that it was not entirely a special condition of her own sex to have to that kind of work. Any agent calculated to be desirable and high profile would be expected to do as much or worse, to use their sexuality in deceit of others.

            "Me neither," Angie said. "I never been kissed by anyone I wanted. My plan is to just kiss someone myself, someday."  

            Peggy felt disconcerted. She could not think, in this moment, why Angie would have been kissed by anyone she didn't want. The thought bewildered her, and she sat quiet and heavy for a long moment. Angie stretched out and sat up.

            "Well, I think, you should plan to find yourself a real kiss, especially now the cat's out of the bag and all," Angie said. She smiled at Peggy, a sort of snarky, confident grin, as if giving her permission of some kind, making light of the drama of recent events.

            Peggy felt a rush of warmth towards Angie. How could anyone be so accepting? she wondered. She had picked up their friendship right where it left off and seemed barely ruffled.

            "So you'll forgive me then for lying to you throughout our _entire_ friendship?" Peggy asked. Angie just shrugged.

            "Hey, a girl's gotta do what she's gotta do to keep safe," she said. Her tone carried a depth of understanding that put Peggy immediately at ease.

            "Thanks, Angie," Peggy said. Her tone conveyed how grateful she felt despite being somewhat washed out by her exhaustion.

            "Don't mention it, honey," Angie said, as she placed her hand on the back of Peggy's. She got up and pulled pajamas out of a top drawer and tossed them to Peg.

            "How'd you know where those were?" Peggy asked.

            "I been spying," Angie said. She drew the curtains swiftly over Peggy's windows, as Peggy pulled the clothes into a pile. "Catch you on the other side of sleep," she said.

            She slipped out the door so quickly, Peggy felt for a moment as if she might pop back into the room. She had to get herself up to put on the pajamas and lock the door. She had fixed habits. She fished her gun out of her bag, checked the rounds in the clip and the chamber and the safety, then put it under the edge of her mattress. Then she lay flat on her stomach with her head tucked under the pillow to make a sort of added shade. And despite the pricking sensation of her back, she fell quickly into a hard, deep sleep.


	2. War And The Brave Ones

Peggy awoke very slowly. Her thoughts scanned about before she was really conscious. She knew first that her pistol was only about eighteen inches from her hand. Then she knew that was because she was still lying on her stomach with her arm hanging off the bed. She knew she had been asleep for a while and did not need to hurry, then she knew where she was and what had happened the day before, that the light from the windows was gone, and she had awoken in the evening. She knew then that her back did not hurt as much as it did when she fell asleep. And she knew that the house was quiet except for a very dull, far off sound. The other women were at dinner. It must be between six and seven o'clock.

Carefully, she sat herself up. She felt tired but unwilling to stay in bed until morning. She would come back soon and sleep through the night. Peggy cared less about food in this moment than she did about a bath. She went down and started the water running and came back to collect her toiletries and put on a robe and sandals. She felt terribly eager for the bath, as if she were about to engage in rare and precious luxury. She felt this way everyday, in fact.

            Peggy had promised herself over and over during the war, when she was covered with mud, smoke and gunpowder residue, and even grimmer forms of filth, that when the war was over, she would bath every single day. She'd also told herself, as she tried to scrub with a hard brush under her broken nails, especially her thumbnails that were worn to concave curves from forcing shells into the springs of magazines, that she would have her nails done every month. She had not missed either one yet since V-Day, and she would be damned if she would begin today.

            She intended to linger in her bath, but as soon as she immersed herself in the steaming water and leaned back she realized that the curve of the elegant brass tub was exactly wrong for the bruise on her back. She sat up, still delighted to be in the water and steam, but more focused on getting clean now, so that she could climb out. She was too tired not to lean back for a very long time. She scrubbed her body and her face with a washcloth filled with soap, basking in the glory of it all. Happy as a lark, as her mother would say.

            She looked around at the brightly scrubbed tile floor and walls and thought about how she would leave this place within a few days. Peggy always loved how clean the women of the Griffith kept their bathroom. She did not feel particularly distressed about finding a new place, but she had to wonder what the bathroom would be like. Tub or shower, she did not care. As long as there was hot water and privacy, Peggy would worship there as if at an altar to peacetime.

            She felt regret that Angie had lost her place here, as well. She was relieved, for her own part, however, in a way much deeper than she would have imagined to be looking at a future where the entire truth was allowed to be spoken between them. She thought about Angie's joke that morning when she said she knew about Peggy's secret life, as well, now and called them equals. Peggy thought back over the course of their relationship, teasing out when and precisely what she knew had been revealed between the two of them. Friendships unfolded slowly and often with an ease that made them hard to track the way she could with many things in life.

            She remembered vaguely that Angie had spoken several times with a sort of ambivalence about men. Peggy remembered one particular time when they were on Angie's bed flipping through some magazines beside one another looking for Angie's new hairstyle. Angie showed Peggy another of a few pictures of famous men she thought looked particularly fine. Peg's comments were bland, as usual.

            "You're a strange one, you are, English," Angie said. "I swear you wouldn't look up from a book if I paraded a naked man in front of you."  

            "That depends entirely upon the man and the reason for him being naked in my presence, as well as the quality of my book," Peggy said.

            "You're a lucky one, then, I'd say, English," Angie said.

            "How so?" Peggy asked.

            "I'm tempted. I just ain't gonna bite," Angie said.

            "Too many bad catches on the end of your line?" Peggy joked.

            "Never again," Angie said, feigning a newscaster's tone speaking of the war.

            "There'll be many disappointed men out there because of that," Peggy said.

            "Let 'em suffer," Angie said.

            She told Peggy more about it the night that she took her to a social gathering with a number of actors she knew. It was the sort of gathering Peggy liked, informal and scattered through the rooms of a small apartment. The music was loud enough to dance, but not so loud that one could not carry on a conversation.

            Angie introduced to her everyone she knew, started with the two women who lived there and threw the party, an actor named Frances and a writer named Jill.   Angie introduced her to Jill first, who took them and got them drinks while chatting pleasantly. She seemed to know Angie quite well, and Peggy felt that she had a real consideration for her that made her like the woman at once.

            When Angie brought Peggy over to Fran, the actor, she gave Peggy a long look, right up and down, that could not be entirely hidden. Peggy had dealt with the jealousy of actors before, who did not know that given her life history as a boarding school athlete, government scientist, and federal agent, she was not a threat to their careers or their romantic endeavors. She expected her look to go hard and close off, but instead Fran met her eyes and smiled. She held out her hand and introduced herself, shook Peggy's hand warmly, and welcomed her into their home. They spend a rather pleasant evening out, and Peggy thanked Angie as they took off their make up and undid their hair in her room afterwards.

            "I think they got it right, those two. I'd like to live like they do," Angie said.

            "They seem to have very happy lives," Peggy agreed.

            "I never really thought a woman could live a good life like that without being in a marriage," she said .

            "I've known other women who were very happy and unmarried," Peggy said.

            "They usually got a lot more money than me," Angie said. "Those two lived on a shoestring for most of their lives, and they were happy even then. And they're not alone. They live real well."

            "Do you think you would prefer not to get married?" Peggy asked. Angie gave a slightly sarcastic smile, but it had a serious or grim edge to it that Peggy thought unusual. It caught her notice because of this. She was used to picking up small cues and inconsistencies that might relay what was hidden. She tried not to scrutinize Angie like a case, but she had mental habits that could not be turned off easily.

            "That's like _my dream_ ," she said. "My parents are very unhappy I'm not married yet. I had a fella' before the war." Peggy watched the line of Angie's mouth, and she felt that she had never seen Angie more serious before.

            "Was he killed in action?" Peggy asked. Angie looked up at her for a moment, considering.  

            "I usually just say yes to that question, but I'll tell you – no," she said. She shifted somewhat uncomfortably. Peggy indeed had never seen her this serious before. "You want to hear about it?"

            "If you don't mind to tell me, then, yes, I would," Peggy said.

            "I'd been seeing this guy, Will Serbino, for about a year. He was nice enough, and my parents liked him. He loved movies, and we'd go out to see a show at least once a week. He enlisted, after the recruitment really kicked in with all those spots before the shows, you know. I hope you won’t think less of me, but, he made us some plans, and I went with him to a hotel a couple nights before he left. He was gone in a jiff, and I felt sort of in shock in the weeks after. I just assumed I'd have to marry him when he got back. And then it looked like I was already pregnant." Angie could see that Peggy was attentively listening and receptive to her story, and she grew more open in the telling.

            "I was workin' doing filing in the building where my dad worked and where two of my brothers had worked before being shipped off. I think they gave me a job to make up for it. I thought I'd just be doing that until he came back. They sent him up to the front line right away, and I thought he would probably die. I had no idea what I would do then.  

            "Then in a few weeks, I figured out that I wasn't pregnant. I got a full day in before I could believe it, but I wasn't. Just late is all, from the stress or something," she said. "I remember right where I was, in the bathroom at work. I sat there lookin' at that little bit of blood and tried to convince myself it was real and not a trick. I finally knew I wasn't pregnant with Will's baby. And all of a sudden, I just started to cry and just couldn’t stop. I sat there and cried my eyes out for probably fifteen minutes, before I realized that it was not with disappointment, it was relief. I had to clock out, and my boss, Jimmy, looked a little scared.

            "I couldn't go home like that, so I went to my grandma Rose. She brought me in and sat me down and made me a cup of coffee. I don't know what she thought while I sat there crying for so long. Then I just couldn't help it, I told her the truth.

            "And, you know what? She wasn't shocked at all. She just kept nodding and looking very grave. I told her the whole thing, about how I was feeling. And you know what she said?

            "She looked right at me, Peg, and said, 'I wasted my whole life on men. Don't you waste yours like I did mine, honey. Not if you have a choice.' I didn't know if I had a choice or not, but she helped me figure one out for myself right then and there. I had it all written out before my grandpa got home, and we moved off the subject and made dinner together, so it would go quicker. I told my parents I went over there after work and acted like they'd just forgotten my plans, and they never asked me a word about it. I don't think they knew she was ever involved.

            "I moved out of there, and I got a new job. My grandma gave me some money, too. And I blew off all my parents plans for me. I got lots of letters from Will when he got back, and from my parents, too, about him. I just didn't answer any of them. He never came looking for me, and I was glad."

            "That's very brave, Angie," Peggy said. Angie looked at her with a sort of surprise and gave what seemed an almost abashed smile.

            "You think so?" she said.

            "Yes, I do," Peggy said.

            "Fran and Jill, they're the brave ones. You get it don't you, what's up with those two?" she asked.

            Peggy thought for a moment about Angie's question. She felt she'd moved her mind away from the idea to lend them a sort of privacy. But she had guessed that they might be lovers. She'd known other women before who she thought were, and some men, as well. There was only one woman she knew who was very open about being sexually involved with women, an operative during the war named Nancy. She was the bravest person Peggy had ever known all around, and she went off with men and women openly all the time. She once looked at Peggy and said, "We're not gonna' live forever," before walking out of a bar holding the hand of a French woman. Perhaps she knew, Peggy thought, that she would keep taking dangerous jobs until the end of the war – the end of her war, really. She died during a mission eight months after that an absolute hero and only twenty-two years old. Peggy remembered feeling glad that she'd been so brash and bold about taking the opportunities she had for pleasure in life, even in the midst of a war that would claim hers so early.

            "I didn't want to presume anything about their relationship," Peggy answered.

            "Well, they're together. They have been for five years now. I don't mind telling you. You're a woman who can keep a secret, and it ain't so secret." Peggy felt an irony in how confidently Angie said this, given that she still did not know just how true it really was. "They've got credibility now that keeps 'em safe, and nobody ever thinks of women like that without men in the picture anyway. Couple months ago, there was a scandal that blew up over Fran and this married director after he drove her home, and she said that she and Jill could go out together anytime they wanted in the wake of that. Jill will just feed the rumors with intentional ambiguity when people ask, thinking she's Fran's friend, and they can get ammunition from her."

            Peggy laughed out loud at this. It reminded her of easy she found it to play the men at work. She should watch out for Daniel, who really noticed her, but no one else seemed able to remember that she could load a gun properly in that office despite her war record being well known. Women were invisible, in a way. No one wanted to see them as they were.

            "I didn't even know that existed, before," Angie said. "That's what I'm gonna' do, Peg. I'm gonna' just find women I trust to share my life with me and my romances, too, if I have any. I'd honestly be surprised to ever spend another moment alone with a man. It won't be for planning it myself," Angie said.

            She spoke with absolute severity. Peggy could see the tension in her body, like she was challenging the whole world to come and fight. It occurred to her to notice that she herself did not feel shocked, just as the idea that she might be must have occurred to Angie.

            "I hope you don't think I'm like a pervert or somethin'," Angie said. She said it lightheartedly, but the moment felt very serious to Peggy regardless.

            "No, I don't. I think that's quite brave," she said. "You want to have what you want on your own terms, as you should have."

            "Okay, good," Angie said. Peggy saw the line of how she held her shoulders shift, just slightly, as they relaxed. Her mind noted the physical cue as if cataloguing a profile. She looked away from Angie a moment, as she felt self-conscious to be studying her like an enemy in a hidden process of interrogation.

            "Cause it's not like I'm going to seduce some poor girl," Angie said, "And drag her off into a life of sin with me." She gave a sarcastic smile, then added more seriously. "I never did like how pushy men were, and I'll be damned if I'll do that to someone else I'd rather just stay on my own, you know, stay single, as long as I've got some real friends around me. People act like they're missing out on the world if they don't find their one true love. I agree there's something to it, but I don't know if I think it is what they all say it is. I seen a lot of covering up the truth in regards to romance and not a lot of substance to match."

            Peggy thought about finding one's true love, and she thought, involuntarily, about Steve. For the first time in her life, she found herself irritated by the thought. She wanted it to go away, and her mind, in response, moved towards it instead, trying to understand why she was feeling newly conflicted all of a sudden.

            Her feelings about him were all mixed up, she was realizing. She wanted him. But she also wanted to keep him safe during the war. Even if they'd never been together, much less been married or had a life together after the war, she felt she had failed both Steve and her own love for him. She felt deeply angry as the thought of the vial holding Steve's blood hidden only feet away from them inside her wall rose up in her mind. They were vying over what tiny part of him was still left. They seemed to Peggy for a moment like greedy dogs tearing at one another's mouths to get at the last bit of his body.

            Steve's body – where was it now?

            She felt herself vexed by how beautiful and alive he had been when she saw him last, and an image of his body lifeless and broken like so many others she had seen. Even as the longing she had felt to draw near to him in life distorted into a longing to find his body and bring him home in order to honor him, she found both cut off. It was worse for Steve than the other men whose bodies she had helped carry. His would be utterly shattered and frozen from the crash. There would be nothing even to bury if they found the plane. They destroyed him entirely, save this piece that they had drawn out him with a syringe when he was alive in a lab someplace. They kept a bit of him safe there, with more reverence for the science than for the man. As if for all their trying, they could in any way replicate such a person.

            Steve was the finest thing Peggy had known during the war, and the war killed him. It tested her faith. She wondered if any of it was worth the fight. She wondered if she'd even chosen the right life. If all their work killed men like Steve, what meaning could it possibly hold beyond the value of his life? She shook her head at her own thoughts, as she thought about how impossible it was to determine who was the aggressor, who instigated the war, and who responded in self-defense. It was and would always be a mess. She could not control it all. She had to find her way amidst all the moral ambiguities of war. But the war should be over, she thought. Why was it not over for her?

            "You got some dark love affair on your mind?" Angie asked.

            "Sort of," Peggy said. "The love affair is not dark, but my love affair with the allied governments have been."

            "Do tell," Angie said.

            "I did a little government work during the war," she said. "They killed the man I love, essentially." Angie started. "Or rather, he sacrificed his own life to protect others. I don't know. It's all mixed up, I suppose."

            "Geeze, I'm sorry, Peg," Angie said. Her face held such a genuine look of sympathy as she put her hand on Peggy's that Peggy felt her eyes well in response.

            "You think it's your fault?" Angie asked. Peggy nearly started herself now, and she looked at Angie with raised eyebrows, shocked at her insightfulness.

            "Sometimes, I suppose I do," she said.

            "What was his name?" Angie asked. Peggy thought for just a moment about telling her and giving her a shock, but she knew she could and should not.

            "Steve," she said. Angie touched her arm now with a gentle squeeze. Somehow telling it so simply made Peggy's heart ache, as if it had been a clean break, one she could manage. A story she could match to another woman's own.  

            Peggy had grown very emotional against her own will. She knew Angie could see it in her face, and she gave a sort of smile and a laugh. She shook her head and wiped her eyes, as she swallowed at the burning knot in her throat. Her love had grown all mixed up with anger, as a consequence of having been utterly tangled up with war, as indeed, it felt now that all her life had been. And perhaps always would be, though she could not understand why.

            Now, in the bathtub, remembering these things, Peggy felt less distressed. Her thoughts settled on the hole she had smashed in the wall. She was done for once that was found out, she was sure. Daniel could speak in the tongues of angels, and it would not protect her. Despite herself, she laughed.

            She would be glad to be rid of this place, in a way. When she felt a strong urge to lie her head on the side of the tub, Peggy decided to get out. She pulled the drain and dried herself off. In the process, she discovered a rather grisly bruise on the back of her leg. She forgot that Dottie had hit her twice with the bat. She felt herself frown immensely. And she thought about the fact that she had not brought her gun with her.

            She put on her robe and went back to her room and glanced under the mattress first thing then felt fine once more. Dottie would not surface until another opportunity arose. And it might have nothing to do with Peggy next time.

            She sat uncertain a moment of what she should put on. Her makeup, she saw, had mostly washed off in the bath. Probably half of it was on her sheets, but she would not look until morning out of an earned wisdom. Finally, she put on a new set of pajamas, made her bed, and sat on top of it. That way, she at least felt like she created a line separating two days and caught up with the world.

            A soft knock came on her door. She opened it and was delighted to find Angie standing there. She was still dressed in work clothes.

            "I saw your light was on," she said softly.

            "Yes. Will you come in?" she asked.

            "Let me just get out of these clothes," Angie said. "Here." She handed Peggy a large paper bag with the top folded down. "Be right back."

            Peggy brought the bag in and opened it on the bed. It was a bag of foods from the automat and not just the usual leftover stuff. She pulled out sandwiches and peaked at them. Then she sat the bag on her desk and got out a woolen blanket from a drawer that she used for picnics sometimes and put it on the bed. She sat down and laid the food out, and Angie came back in her own pajamas as she did.

            "We got a Rueben, a turkey, an egg salad, and two tunas," she said of the paper-wrapped sandwiches. Peggy pulled out a folded tin with nearly half of a strawberry rhubarb pie in it and a paper wrapped around a nice chunk of chocolate cake with white frosting. There was also a little paper, lidded cup of cold tea.

            "That's probably terrible, but I thought you might want it anyway," Angie said.

            "I do," Peggy said. And she pulled the top and drank it all in one long drink without breathing, so that she could barely taste how bad it was. Angie gave a soft sort of laugh.

            "I figure I can get away with anything now that I know you ate military food for so much of your life. I always wondered why you didn't seem to mind eating at the automat all the time," Angie said. She pulled a bottle of whiskey from her pocket. "I brought this, too," she said with a slight smile. She poured Peggy's cup half full then took a drink herself.

            Angie had missed dinner during her shift, so she and Peggy sat and quietly ate all the food she had brought home with her. Peggy ate more than half, and it all tasted magnificent to her.

            "I owe you a lunch, at least," Peggy said, as she managed a bite of the cake by holding it in the paper.  

            "Nah," Angie said, "Franky gave me all this stuff on the house. Tomorrow morning is my last shift there. I can hardly wait to be honest."

            Peggy knew that Franky was Angie's boss. Her mind drew up what she knew of him. The owner of the diner, James Marshall, had been away during the war and come back injured. Franky had worked his way up and kept the place going and become a co-owner since then. That was why the office kept its business there, and why Peggy had gone there at first. Peggy knew only one story about Franky from Angie herself.

            "How's work been?" Peggy had asked her one evening.

            "Good," Angie had said. "Quiet lately. It's been nice. Did you say something to that guy with the eggs? The POW camp guy?" Angie asked suddenly.  

            "You mean regular who claimed to have been in a POW camp to assert his right to eggs? I remember him. Why do you ask?" Peggy had said, dodging a direct answer, as she feigned innocence.

            "He must've found another place," Angie had said.

            Peggy knew exactly who she was talking about. She had seen him flirt with Angie, nice as could be, several times before. Angie never even acknowledged it. Peggy wondered if she noticed fully, she was usually so distracted while she was at work. Peggy could almost swear that Angie could not tell one man from another most of the time. Peggy could not forget a face or the myriad of tiny indicators she noticed of men's histories and intentions if she tried. So she also knew this man had tried precisely the same thing with ever other girl who worked there. There was something about Angie's response he didn't like. Peggy was observing over her menu the day he changed tactics. He started to complain about his food. Peggy could almost swear by his face and his tone that he really believed his coffee was terrible. She watched him smiling to himself, when Angie grew concerned and went to make a new pot and got him a new cup, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. He liked the extra attention, Peggy thought, the care he was getting. He liked it more, because Angie had not been paying him any special attention before.

            There was something about that had stuck in Peggy's mind. Something she could not seem to shake. Over the next couple of weeks, she tracked that she had not seen him except on Angie's shifts. She saw him walk by the front window on one occasion and look to see if Angie was there. He went on when he saw she wasn't.

            Peggy felt angry when she saw that. She realized that the power games had intensified the morning he'd complained about his eggs. Peggy had watched him, still wondering what on earth he really wanted. His claims of having been a POW felt offensive to Peggy. She could see in a dozen clues from his color to his shape that he had been working domestic placements if he'd been in the service at all.

            As she sat feeling irritated and took a drink of tea to distract herself, for some reason, Peggy's mind drew up the most vivid memory of helping to wash the hands of a soldier she'd known who she'd helped pull out of a POW camp. He'd had his fingernails ripped off, and Peggy watched his jaw muscles strain as she washed them with a sanitizing solution despite the number of drinks he'd had and the numbing agent she'd mixed in with it. She sat noticing her own red nails with discomfort at the memory for a moment.

            She looked up just in time to see the man as he slapped Angie on the butt. As Angie walked off, Peggy felt a rage take shape inside her body, unlike any she had felt since the end of the war. She figured it out in that moment. He had his sights on Angie, and this was how he was going about it now that niceness didn't work. For a moment she was distracted by her own memories of testing and pushing a dozen or more men, who had no idea what she was really after, into an encounter with her. The sensation was uncomfortably equalizing. But that, she decided, was war, and this was not. At least, this wasn't supposed to be. This guy, suddenly, in Peggy's mind, he was treating it like a war. And so would she.

            That was how she had found herself not ten minutes later walking to work with no regret about having threatened the public murder of a civilian. Even now, a few weeks later, it made a heat rise up inside her. She felt worried he was off trying out some other women in some other diner someplace.

            "I suppose that's bad for business," Peggy had said in the moment to cover up what had occurred.

            "Nah," Angie had said, "Franky's glad he's gone. He kept telling the girls to keep away from him. He didn't like the guy. 'Too touchy,' he said."

            That was how Peggy had developed a liking for Franky, although she knew little about him. She felt herself wanting to dislike him now, even though he had apparently fed her this meal.  

            "Why did Franky fire you?" she asked.

            "Oh, nah. It wasn't nothing like that," Angie said. "With the customers so shy of the place, I could tell he was going to need to lay someone off. I talked to him and told him it should be me, since I was thinking I was going to secretary school."

            "This is because of me," Peggy said.

            "No, of course it's not. Stuff like this happens in New York all the time. They'll trickle back in as the memory fades out. Otherwise, the whole city would be vacant at this point. I've been wanting to leave for a while now," Angie said. "Granted, I didn't know I would be moving houses, at the same time, but that's alright. I'm more worried about finding a place than work, actually. Would you believe it, I got some money saved."

            "On your wages?" Peggy asked.

            "Yeah, of course. I mean, look where I live," Angie said. "A girl's gotta' have something to fall back on if she wants to be out on her own."

            "Fair enough," Peggy said. "What do you think you'd like to do next?"

            "Well, that idea about secretary school, it got me thinking," she said. "They must have school for acting, too."

            "They do," Peggy said. She hesitated a moment. "The government hires acting teachers as contractors to work with people like me. I have eight personas that are pretty refined."

            "Really?" Angie said with clear delight. "That's amazing."

            "Yes, I suppose it is," Peggy said.

            "So you could be pretending all the time, acting our entire friendship, and I would never suspect a thing," Angie said. Peggy actually looked at her and smiled.

            "It doesn't work like that," she said. Angie's eyes were smiling, showing that she was kidding. "Reallly, though, Angie, I think that's a great idea."

            "Yeah. I got to look into it. I'll find a place first, then look around at where I could go while I figure out jobs, as well. Might take a while, but it seems like a good plan. I bet I can figure out how to make it work," Angie said.

            "You can," Peggy said. Her tone conveyed how much she believed in Angie.

            "It's hard to think you've been taking me seriously this whole time," Angie said.

            "What do you mean?" Peggy asked.

            "I mean given what you've been doing with your life. Here I am living the drama of serving eggs while dodging jerks and trying to land an acting gig. You're out saving the world," Angie said.

            "My doing dangerous work does not make your life less important than mine," Peggy said with sincerity.

            "Still, you're pretty special, though, Peg," she said.

            "So are you, Ang," Peggy said. Her tone was very sincere.

            "Thanks, sweetie," Angie said. She looked slightly abashed but pleased.

            "I think you should know you're the only one who recognizes much worth in me at all until people start dying and I pull things together," she said. Angie gave a sort of overwhelmed laugh at this comment.

            "For every other woman I know, that'd be a metaphor – apt, but a metaphor," Angie said.

            "Same dynamics play out even in government work. I wish it were a world apart from this one," Peggy said.

            "Yeah," Angie said, and Peggy could tell she was remembering all the stories she had heard about the phone company and translating them into this new framework. "Must be hard as hell watching what happens when people don't take you seriously enough and lives are on the line." Peggy often felt astonished at the depths of Angie's insightfulness about her. Angie drew more accurate information out of what little emotional transparency Peggy could offer than a highly trained operative might have done.

            "This friendship means a lot to me," Peggy said.

            "Me too," Angie said. She squeezed Peggy's shoulder. "I'm glad you aren't disappearing on me. Don't change your mind, alright?"

            "I promise I won't," Peggy said, and she quite meant it. Angie gathered up the garbage from their meal.

            "I should take this downstairs, at least," she said. "Catch you tomorrow."

            "G'night," Peggy said.

            "Night," Angie said, as she made her way out the door.


	3. Peggy Assesses Her Situation

            Regardless of the past two days, Peggy awoke sharply at five a.m. She had too many years of matching herself to military service to sleep in even when it was what she wanted. She awoke in the dark and turned on her light. She thought about doing her usual exercise routine and tried a few push-ups. The pain it send across her back brought an image of being stabbed with a roller of needles into her mind, and she had to desist and abandon the idea at once.

            She dressed instead and did her hair and make up. She heard Angie head out to work around five thirty. It was still too early for breakfast, so she went out and bought a bag of doughnuts and a cup of coffee nearby. She sat on a bench and watched the light of the sun slowly start to illuminate the buildings. She came in for breakfast at six with a ready-made story in her mind. The routine of a chatty morning at the Griffith put her in a good mood. She would miss the women here, and even the food in a way. Everything tasted better when you had people to eat it with, she felt.

            After a long breakfast and a couple of lingering cups of tea, she felt she had satisfied everyone's curiosity without revealing much that would compromise the government. She went in to the office, chatting briefly with several other agents.

            There was an envelope on her desk. It was Stark's check, she could see. And there was a jewelry box on top of it. Thompson came over to her.

            "Howard Stark for you," he said. He pointed at the phone. Peggy had not heard his phone ring in his office.

            "Did you call him?" she asked. He shrugged noncommittally, picked up her phone, and sat it on her desk. He sauntered into his office and hung up his own, then sat on the edge of his desk looking over some papers. She picked up the phone and put it to her ear. Stark must have heard her breath or something, because he began talking before she could think of a nicely harsh way to start them off.

            "Hi, Peg. There's your money. It's half the going rate for any of the kind of work you did for me recently, so just shut up and take it. Jarvis says you're being weird about staying the place I picked out for you," Stark said.

            "I'm not entirely certain what you mean by 'being weird,' but if you mean I have trepidations about moving into one of your many trysting places, then yes, I am a bit reluctant."

            "Oh, don't be like that. Every place harbors trysts, Peg. Bars, churches… your office. I think that guy Wallace…"

            "Please stop," Peggy interjected before another noun could find a place in that sentence.

            "Anyways, you get my point. Take the pad, Peg. I've barely used it in the past. It's yours. I won't forget and come barging in on you, I promise. Bring some of those poor girls from that fancified ladies' prison you live in if you want to. Bring a chap. Just do what you want. It's your place for as long as you want. No strings. You should know by this point, I'm not trying to buy you. I consider you a friend. You should learn to accept some support now and again. I mean, a lot of us just take and do it all the time," he said.

            He had a point, Peggy thought, though she was not sure what the ramifications of it were. She had opened the envelope, and there was a note on simple white paper that said just, "Thanks." Somehow that made his antics seem more sincere.

            "I suppose I can take you up on it as a friend. Although I do plan to talk to you about the way you treat other women the next and _every_ time I see you. One exception in a sea of disrespect does not a heart of integrity make," Peggy said.

            "Fair," Stark said. "Oh, did you open my other gift?" Peggy lifted the box.

            "If this is a bracelet, I promise never to speak with you again," Peggy said.

            "It's not. I thought you'd recognize the box and put it in one as a joke. Open it," Stark said.

            Peggy opened it and found a new lipstick inside that said _Sweet Dreams_ on it. She felt a bit speechless at the fact that he'd noticed she must have lost hers during the ordeal. She had quite forgotten herself.

            "You're quiet. You like it. I'm glad. That's just the beginning. Don't bother saying thanks, I still owe you several more of my own. Have lunch with me when I'm next in town if you can stand me that long at a stretch, okay?"

            "Of course, I will," Peggy said.

            "Hey, Peg. Ever wonder how the other guys at the office can afford kids while you have to live in shared rooms? Ask your friend Sousa what he makes. Take my love with you." He hung up.

            Peggy felt baited, but she knew it had worked. She walked over to Daniel's desk. She glanced to see that there was no one else within earshot.

            "Daniel," Peggy said.

            "Yeah," he said, spinning around and crossing his hands behind his head.

            "What do you make? In wages, I mean," she asked.

            "Seven fifty," he said. "It's a little less than normal, because of this." He tapped at his leg under the desk. "They figure I have a limited range in fulfilling the usual duties." He gave a sarcastic smile. "Why?"

            "And when you say, 'seven fifty,' you do mean seven hundred and fifty dollars a month?" Peggy said.

            "No, a week," he said, as if her question were absurd. His face grew serious. "Why? What do you make?"

            "I make one seventy-five a week," Peggy said.

            "What? Those are wartime wages," he said. He looked confused, but he also seemed to be just on the edge of becoming quite enraged.

            "I need to do a little bit of thinking before I come back to the office," Peggy said.

            "Fair enough," he said in a tone of very mild horror with a brief shake of his head. He added more warmly, "I hope you'll keep in touch if you decide to move on."

            "Yes, I will," she said.

            "I don't mean with the office. I mean with me, myself," he said. Peggy actually had not gotten that at first. She thought that she might blush, so she smiled and answered quickly, as she turned aside before he could see.

            "I'm glad," Peggy said. He gave her a soft smile and a nod, and she went away.

            Peggy walked out onto the street unsure of what to do with her day. For a start, she walked to the bank and deposited Stark's check. She got a balance on her accounts and looked at it. She had more money than she had thought. She benefited from excessive discipline in her financial life, but she also did not particularly care about money and often failed to really consider how she might get more of it. The Carters and the Prestons were all "bad capitalists" her father had joked casually when she was younger, so she took it from both sides.

            She ripped the paper with the sums written on it and crumpled it threw it away in halves in two separate trash cans so it would be hard to piece back together, even though this bordered on the neurotic and proved her work habits spilled out into the rest of her life in a way that annoyed her.

            She was richer, so she ought to buy something, she thought to herself. Perhaps something to commemorate the end of this strange run at her work and having come out, by most definitions, victorious. What did one buy? Maybe a hat or a bottle of fine bourbon. She wondered about the streets of New York window shopping, more enjoying her freedom and lack of purpose than anything else.

            She found herself at one point stopped in front of a jewelry shop. Peggy did not like or wear jewelry. She realized she was standing on the sidewalk looking at a necklace and asking herself whether it was something Angie would like. A tiny part of her was considering buying it for her as a gift.

            She'd walked in before she really processed this fully. There were a couple of other people in the store, so she was left for alone few moments. There was a bracelet in the case that reminded her suddenly of the ones Stark sent to all the woman he finagled into an encounter with him. Suddenly, a rough comparison drew itself in her mind between what she was doing and this.

            Even before she had done a day of government work, Peggy would not have missed a clue like this one. She practically bolted from the shop, walked straight into the nearest bar, ordered herself a straight double of bourbon, and drank half in one drink. As her throat and eyes burned, she asked herself quite frankly if she were in love with her best friend. Then she drank half of what was left. She stood waiting for an answer to surface inside of her.

            "Geeze. I hope he's worth it," the bartender said. It was not yet noon. Peggy glanced up at him. He stood nearby rubbing at the counter with rag and giving her a shy sort of half-grin. He seemed nice and also to be considering whether or not he ought to flirt with Peggy.

            "This is over a woman actually," Peggy said and finished her drink. He laughed at that and shook his head, leaning into the counter a moment.

            "There's no cure for that in here, miss," he said. "Believe me. I've seen every one of 'em tried a hundred times." He nodded towards the bottles as he said this, and then he rounded the corner and went into the back, leaving Peggy in peace.

            Peggy stood wondering what he had made of her joke. She thought to glance around the bar. It was practically empty, and everyone else seemed distracted. She was behaving rashly, she thought. And that, in and of itself, was another clue.

            She remembered being a girl of seventeen in potentially the worst trouble of her life. During her summer with her parents, who were living on an estate at the edge of London that year, she had both run off and taken her father's shotgun without permission. She gone on a shoot with a few male friends she had at the time, none of whom she could remember now. Her father sat down in front of her, and she remembered noticing that he held a piece of paper in his hand with notes written on it.

            "Your mother and I have spoken at length," he said. "And we feel that we can't rightly ignore your behavior." Peggy remembered thinking that was fair, and she felt suspended somewhere between shame and an utter rebellion of disregard. She felt prepared to receive any punishment without resistance, but she felt for some reason that she could not apologize. He went on.

            "We believe that when you behave rashly, it means you are unhappy with your situation," he said. Peggy felt surprised, even though she remembered then that after she had run away from her first boarding school at the age of twelve five times in six months, she had been moved to another school without sending any such request to her parents. "So, we've decided that we can either get you a bicycle so you can go into town when you like or else send you in to stay with your aunt Barbara if you like. But either way, you must tell us where you are going and when you will return, and it should normally be before midnight when we go to bed. And you cannot take any guns or anything else dangerous with you when you go without explicit permission and a better reason than a sudden desire to shoot pheasant for the first time with a rash batch of village boys. Can you agree to that?" he said.

            "Bicycle," Peggy said eagerly. "Agreed." They shook hands.

            Peggy reached for the bottle behind the bar now and held it up to the bartender through the opening to the back. He nodded, and she poured herself another drink. She drank this one more slowly. Why was she not happy with her situation, she wondered? She considered that she had never been much good at using her words to describe her distress or make requests on her own behalf. Luckily, her parents respected her and deciphered from her actions what was happening underneath. She should do that for herself now.

            Peggy realized standing there, alone in a bar, that she felt completely isolated since the war. Somehow, she was no longer a part of something, no longer shifting into and out of various missions with a web of camaraderie to hold her together with those around her. Until Angie, she had felt entirely alone. And had Angie not more or less dragged her into a home filled with women again, though she had little in common with most of them – excepting Dottie as odd as that felt to acknowledge – she would still feel alone save that single strand of connection.

            And unlike during the war, it was not some sense of purpose beyond herself that drew Angie to Peggy. She cared about Peggy for herself. In that way, she was like very few people Peggy had been gifted with in her life.

            So what did that mean? If Angie were to go off with another woman, how would she feel? The anxiety that rose up at the answer made her down this drink and pour herself another one. She would not be so uncomfortable as this if she would not mind. That's four shots, some governing voice in her mind said abruptly, as she was about to take another drink. She put the glass down. She took out money and paid, and she waved to the bartender.

            She went out and walked down the street, heading in the direction of the bay. She would walk along the water. She tried to sort through each part of her answer to the question that now seemed to hang over her head: Why was she not happy with her situation?

            Peggy could not think of many reasons why she should be happy. When had that begun? It creeped over her life like a poisonous gas cloud carried on an imperceptible wind.

            She realized she could not care less if she kept or lost her job, or rather, that she had shreds of strong feelings in both directions working at odds with one another. The office felt a hostile place to her. Either she would return and demand a change, or she would leave. She decided then and there. She would start with wages and missions. She'd get an equal share, or she would go. Working for Stark would not be worse than that. And the truth was that she did not have to work for a while if she did not want to. She had money saved including a small inheritance from her grandparents and a pile of money she had saved from wages during the war when she spent almost nothing, as there was generally nothing to buy.

            Life felt mostly blank outside of work. Peggy never shifted back into life after the war, somehow. Angie felt like the only thing in her life that distinctly was not associated with wartime. If Angie were to go away, Peggy would be alone again. That was something, Peggy realized, she could remedy. She could find real friends, she felt sure, if she were not working all the time. And perhaps a change of jobs would bring her closer to some more kindred spirits.

            That made her feel much better – although admittedly she now felt the drinks she'd had that were enough to let her roll her shoulders without any real pain – about thinking again about her relationship to Angie. What would happen, Peggy wondered again, if Angie went off with a woman? The idea made Peggy's heart feel broken, and yet somehow it felt broken already.

            She realized with a sudden weight that settled upon her that this was about Steve. How could it be? she wondered. And yet it quite plainly was. With Steve, she'd felt some vision for her life after the war. Peggy used to joke that she needed only to find one, single man whom she wanted and trusted. That was all she needed. That idea felt foolish to her now, in more ways than one. She felt selfish in a way, and also as if the idea came well before the war, before she realized how readily the world would take and destroy the men around her.

            She supposed in some part of her heart, she had decided that there was no life for her after the war. When Steve disappeared, that frail vision disappeared, as well. Somehow, she felt, Angie represented a new life. But it was a life that profoundly spoke of the truth that Steve was not there. He would not be a part of her life or of the world after the war.

            Peggy found herself wanting to weep, but too sad and too full of drink to let herself do it now. She felt that she had opened up a well of grief in herself. And it would be there now, calling for her care until she tended to it fully. She knew a great deal about survivor's guilt, about the arrested processes of grief that stole life from those who made it through times of war. She suffered from something utterly common, yet potentially devastating. The only way to honor the sacrifices and the lives of the dead was to honor that gift of life you had yourself and choose to live happily and well.

            For Peggy, in some way, that meant choosing Angie. She had been choosing Angie for a while now, drawing closer to her. What would come next? What did she want? She wanted to remain closer with her and keep drawing closer. Their intimacy gave her a peace and a joy that she felt now was the finest part of her current life.

            She tried to picture whether she wanted them to have a romance together or not. She would be jealous, she felt, if Angie found another woman. She did not really have a sense of what a romance with another woman would mean. In fact, she did not really have a sense of what a romance with anyone would mean. There was a sort of rivalry mixed up with the draw between her and Steve that made it feel more familiar in a way. That was not there with Angie. All that existed between them was gentle, inviting, and safe. Somehow, that felt more frightening in a way, even if it also felt less combative.

            Peggy stayed out all day, eventually walking to the water. She ate fried seafood from a small shack and drank a bottle of cream soda. She found a small diner and drank a cup of horrible tea. The day remained clear, and Peggy spent the time wandering and looking out at the sea, watching the people and the gulls and the ships move about their new, peacetime routines. They seemed at times just as absorbed and detached as they had been during the war, as if they had not awoken yet, and at times, easy and free to Peggy's mind.

            Peggy decided on two things. The first was that she would ask Angie to come live with her at Stark's place. And the second was that she would try moving towards some kind of romance with Angie and see where it went. Maybe there would be nothing, no potential there that could draw them further into it. That would be alright, and Peggy felt that then she would be more able to support Angie as a friend when she did find someone she connected with in that way.

            It did not seem such a big deal now, and as it drew close to dinner, Peggy hailed herself a cab. She felt sobered and reoriented. Although, as she walked up to the Griffith, she felt a rare hesitancy in her step and a catch in her chest. Long ago, however, Margaret Carter had learned for an absolute fact that she was brave. So she was not surprised that her step never actually faltered on her way home this day.

           

            Peggy knocked on the door to Angie's room. She opened it. She was drying her hair. She showered after she came home when she had a morning shift.

            "Hey," she said with a smile for Peggy. "You're looking at a free woman."

            "Congratulations," Peggy said. She came inside and sat down on Angie's bed. She thought Angie seemed very happy, and perhaps relieved to have finished with her job.

            "How was your day?" Angie asked.

            "Quite excellent, actually," Peggy said.

            "Good. Haven't heard that one before from you," Angie said. She looked closely at Peggy, as if suspecting an imposter. Peggy smiled. Angie kept on getting ready, so they could go down to dinner.

            "I have a proposition for you," Peggy said.

            "Ooh, do tell," Angie said with exaggerated intrigue.

            "I think I've found us a place to live," Peggy said. Angie's hands dropped from the task of drying her hair one last time. She took a moment to respond, as if in disbelief.

            "Really?" she said. "What kind of place is it? What's it cost?"

            "It's, well, it's free actually. Howard Stark has offered me one of his smaller places for a while, and you're invited, as well." Angie just blinked.

            "You kiddin', Peg?" Angie said. She gave Peggy a suspicious sort of look with one raised eyebrow.

            "No, of course not. I wouldn't joke about something like this," Peggy said. "So long as you don't mind living with a dangerous woman, and potentially living on grounds policed occasionally by Dobermans, as Howard Stark's places are wont, then the place is yours."

            "How long can we have it?" Angie asked.

            "However long," Peggy said with a shrug. "He's not exactly going to go without."

            "How many people live there?" Angie asked.

            "No one, it's empty," Peggy said. She decided not to explain why it existed at all, though she suspected that the contents of the wardrobes would bring this out eventually.

            "And where is it?" Angie asked. Her tone has turned from skeptical to astonished. Peggy handed her the address on a slip of paper Jarvis had given her.

            Angie seemed to finally get the point that this was a real offer. Peggy could see that she was far more excited than Peggy had even imagined she might be. Apparently, the prospect of finding a good place had been weighing heavily on her mind. She was grinning now, delighted.

            "Oh my God, Peggy! I could kiss you!" Angie said in exuberance.

            The comment caught Peggy off her guard, and the thought of being abruptly kissed by a woman flashed through Peggy's mind with the excess force of a lost memory. Her mind drew out right then a fragment of something she had quite lost: the vivid memory of Dottie knocking her out in the hallway nearby. She could now recall her own thoughts in that moment as the drugs hit her mind like a wall of fog with the weight and speed of a truck. The first was a thought of ecstatic excitement and some humor that she would have to tell Angie. And the second was a profound anxiety of hoping that Angie did not just see another woman kiss her. This took all of one second for Peggy's mind to recall, yet, even so, she lost her usual stoic front and grew quite obviously abashed at Angie's words.

            "I'd rather you didn't. Not unless you quite mean it," she said without first deciding what she would say. She felt herself grow unusually shy. She smiled still, but she was clearly thrown.

            Angie just grinned briefly in response. She reached to squeeze Peggy's hand briefly, as she turned to look about the room. Peggy knew Angie wanted to draw the attention away from Peggy and the blush on her cheeks, so she would not grow any more self-conscious.

            "We had better get packin'!" Angie said. She acted as if their move were a serious endeavor. Peggy knew it would take them both no more than a few hours to gather their scarce belongings together. But Angie treated the whole process like a ritual, and she included many of the other women. Peggy had not considered the social aspect of it all, and she quite marveled at Angie's ability to say goodbye to everyone during the process of leaving, making it seem less abrupt, though it stretched the whole experience out into quite an event.

            Before it got really late, they settled back into their own rooms. There was little left to pack. Peggy sorted through some small drawers in her desk. Angie was beside her and looking at a few things on top her dresser.

            "Can I try this?" Angie said.

            "Yes," Peggy mumbled, as she turned slightly to see what she was talking about, saw out the corner of her eye, then suddenly and urgently said, "No!" Angie had the _Sweet Dreams_ out of the box and in her hands. She looked at Peggy in amusement, as if wondering if she were slightly crazy.

            "That's… classified," Peggy said. She had become so awkward, she could not find a proper phrase. Angie laughed in a kind way at her.

            "What's it do?" she asked.

            "It will knock you out," Peggy answered.

            "That seems like a dumb trick," Angie said looking at it skeptically.

            "No," Peggy said, correcting herself, "I mean, you put on another lipstick first. Then this one knocks out whomever you kiss." Angie stared at it for just a moment before turning to Peggy.

            "Afraid I'm gonna' kiss you, Carter?" Angie asked. She gave a sarcastic grin. Peggy was less tired than she had been, and she caught both the flirtation and the joke and felt a competitive instinct in response.

            "More of passing out," she retorted.

            "I'm not that good on my own," Angie said, as she relinquished the poised hold she had on the lipstick.

            "You wouldn't be kissing on your own," Peggy said with her eyes still locked on Angie's.

            Angie smiled almost shyly and rolled the lipstick down and started putting it back in the case. She started suddenly.

            "Oh, my God!" she said. "This is how they caught you, isn't it!"

            "That," Peggy said in smooth, high status tone, "Is classified, Miss Martinelli."

            "It is! What happened exactly? Did Dottie _kiss you_? I thought she knocked you out in a fight or somethin'!" she said. Peggy could not think of a quick enough answer.

            "It is what happened!" Angie said looking at her. She actually pointed at Peggy, as she called her out.

            Peggy could not hold out a front any longer. She laughed as well and grew openly embarrassed. She waved her hand at Angie, who was now fully cracking up and delighted.

            "It serves me right, honestly, after all these years," Peggy said.

            "Taste of your own medicine was it?" Angie said. She sat down with a bounce on Peggy's bed still laughing.

            "That's one way to put it, yes," Peggy said.

            "The taste of a forbidden world, as well," Angie said with mock drama. "I am almost jealous. In these halls!"

            "Well, I personally refuse to count that as a kiss more than any of the others I've orchestrated from the other side of things," Peggy said.

            "Fair enough," Angie said. "She did want to kill you."

            "Exactly," Peggy said. "I will not count anything done by someone who either hates or does not know who I really am as officially kissing." Angie gave a sort of sarcastic huff.

            "Well, then I've never been kissed either," she said. "I'm a kissing virgin." She smiled in delight at the improperness of her own joke and bit the tip of her tongue lightly. She bounced on the bed afterwards. She seemed in such a good mood. Peggy felt herself really going to blush at her thoughts as she looked at Angie's face now.

            "Don't temp me," Peggy said.

            "I would if I could," Angie said without a pause.

            Their banter died down after that for a while. They went to Angie's room and finished packing there, then came back and riffled through the very last of Peggy's things. Other women came and went, and at one point the room was crowded with six other women besides themselves.  

            At last, everyone else seemed to have trickled away to bed, and Peggy sat at her chair looking about the room. She could see Angie doing the same thing. There was nothing left to pack, and they had said all their goodbyes. As if in response to the end of a shift, Angie grew tired all at once. She yawned and stretched, and she moved Peggy's pillows to prop herself up and lay back on the bed.

            "Only one more night at the Griffith," Angie said. Peggy came over to lay beside her on the bed, tensing a bit as her back settled. "You know, I thought I'd live here for years."

            "Really?" Peggy said. She wondered if Angie were sadder to go than she seemed.

            "Mm-hm," Angie said. "I mean, I never thought I'd get kicked out over any men, so what else could happen?"

            "Me, I guess," Peggy said.

            "Yeah, but you're worth it," Angie teased and gave her the lightest slap on the thigh. Peggy cracked up despite herself. She did feel bad still that Angie was being forced out, but there was no doubt they were both happy about their situations.

            "I feel like I'm gettin' whole new life in one day," Angie said.

            "Me, too, actually," Peggy said.

            "If it turns out like you said, and your friend Howard Stark doesn't mind us staying on, I think I will scope out acting lessons first and a job second," Angie said.

            "That sounds like a great idea," Peggy said.

            "Maybe I'll finally get some classes I can pay attention to without suffering and giving myself stress headaches. I did good in school, but let me tell you, honey, I had to _try_. " Peggy laughed.

            "I felt that way about math," she said.

            "I'm sure you did," Angie said dismissively, teasing Peg. "It'll be a whole new ballgame for me now. No more algebra, French, government. Onward to the real skills – crying, other types of crying, smart ass comment delivery, comedic timing, pretending to be asleep, dancing, kissing." Peggy laughed her way through the list. "I will _excel_ , "Angie said.

            "Unfortunately, you will be expected to kiss exclusively men," Peggy said.

            "Hey, as long as there are no strings," Angie joked. "Maybe I can cop a feel while I'm in there."

            "Angie," Peggy said in artificial reproof. Angie chuckled softly at her own joke.

            "Nah, I can put on a show for 'em. They will believe no woman has ever desired men more than I do," Angie said. "Then unlike every other woman who's faking it with a man, I'll get paid and get to go home alone."

            "It's a champion plan," Peggy said.

            "Yeah," Angie said. She kept chuckling, but she grew more concentrated. "I got to get some plans for some real kissing in there, though. All work and no play makes Jane a dull girl." They lay in silence for a moment, and Peggy's mind mulled over what she might say in a moment like this.

            "Shouldn't be too hard to find," she managed, though her voice came out softer than she imagined it would with no joke in it really at all.

            "Maybe I will try kissing you someday," Angie said. She opened her hand against Peggy's casually as she did. Peggy matched her fingers, on a sort of instinct, to Angie's. The comment did not rattle her at all.

            "I think I should like that," she said. Now that she'd said it, she felt the weight of it dissipate. Saying it had not damaged or changed anything between them in any irrevocable way.

            "I'll try not to surprise you," Angie said.

            "Oh, good," Peggy responded.

            "I don’t want to set off any bad memories," she said, as she held a burst of laughter inside her chest.

            "I will try to stay fully conscious," Peggy said.

            "Yes, please do," Angie said. "And catch me if I faint."

            That was the last thing Peg would later remember being said before Angie made her way off to her own room. She went to sleep somewhat astonished with herself. The pricking sensation of her back, as it tried to heal, could not compare with the sensations in the rest of her body. She felt a mix of both exhilaration and easiness, both tension and calm unlike any she had quite felt before in life, as far as she could remember. This was probably the first new experience she'd had since the end of the war that was not a negative one.


	4. Embracing A Fear Of Death

            Peggy felt herself stiffen the next morning when her sore back hit the hard leather seat as she and Angie piled into a cab. Angie hooked her arm under Peggy's, and Peggy had to a clear a small catch in her voice to give directions to their driver. She felt rather aware of him for a moment, as if she were managing operations and not merely catching a ride across town. It was her relationship to Angie, she knew, that made it feel that way. She would have to get used to it, she thought, as she willed herself to lean back into the seat and look out the window as she would have if Angie were not holding her arm with her knee touching lightly against Peggy's in the back of a public taxi.

            They met Jarvis. He gave them a brief tour of the house. Peggy's misgivings about living in one of Stark's houses came back in a sort of rush. She could tell Jarvis tried to steady her and keep her on course. He knew Peggy barely listened to what he said, though he did seem placated when he showed them the bathroom, and Peggy actually stepped in and said with feeling, "How nice." Angie's responses were more satisfying, and Jarvis seemed pleased despite appearing to be rather shy of Angie, especially when he mentioned his wife, which Peggy thought a bit odd. Perhaps most women he met ended up striking him over Stark's ill treatment, and he had become a bit skittish.

            When Jarvis had gone, Peggy went to the kitchen. She found the grocer's list he had described. He said he had called up and initiated Stark's regular orders be brought on Tuesdays and Fridays. There was a card that could be left with any other requests. There was no discussion about money, which Peggy knew meant it would be covered by Stark. She took a deep breath and decided to accept one more favor – a return favor as Stark would have reminded her. She scanned through the list of what he ordered, almost surprising to find it listed quite ordinary foods.

            "Well, I feel silly for thinking you might be with him," Angie said, coming into the kitchen.  

            "Jarvis?" Peggy said. "Indeed, he is a rather asexual entity."

            "You're kidding right?" Angie said with a smirk of a grin.

            "No, not at all. There's nothing appealing to me about Jarvis."

            "I don't think there's anything sexually appealing about you to him either," Angie said still giving a faint, almost sarcastic grin.

            "No, I think not," Peggy said.

            "That one is all for his wife," Angie said with a shake of her head.

            "Indeed," Peggy said with a tone of distance from the subject, "They seem rather dedicated to one another."

            "Peg, please tell me you're playing it cool right now." Peggy looked up at Angie, baffled as to what was going on. Angie was staring at her in a sort of disbelief. "I think it's obvious those two have a rather _special_ sort of relationship."

            "I'm sure it is," Peg said. Angie seemed unable to help herself and laughed at Peggy.

            "What?" Peggy said in exasperation.

            "The way he tells you that stuff, Peg, he's offering a confidence. All that stuff, that's sexual stuff. She's in charge. Are you getting my meaning here?"

            "Ah," Peggy said. "I think I am beginning to see what you mean."

            "I don't mean to freak you out or anything, but I'm pretty sure he thinks he's confided in you all out."

            "I would not be freaked out," Peggy said, annoyed, "What they do in their relationship is entirely up to them, and if it pleases them both, and especially given that they clearly love each other, then I am all for it."

            "It's Stark's way of going about it that freaks you out?"

            "If his narcissism were a game, the world would be better for it. He'd have to find people who actually wanted to play along. He hasn't enough respect for anyone, including himself, to do that."

            "I'll second all those sentiments. Let me just find us a drink, and I'll toast you to that," Angie said. She went and found a bottle of champagne in the fridge. She brought it over to Peg.

            "Know how to open this?" she asked. Peggy quickly removed the label and popped the cork. Only a small amount bubbled out and poured onto the floor.

            "To homecoming!" Angie said, snatching the bottle and taking a drink. She laughed as she pushed the bubbles off her chin.

            "To knowing right where we are," Peggy said in response. She took a drink from the bottle herself and put the back of her wrist to her lips as she tried to keep the bubbles from going up into her nose. She went and found some glasses and poured them each a drink and sat the bottle by the sink. They touched glasses mildly.

            "Why don't you take the big bed," Angie said, casually.

            They had decided to settle into a hall with two bedrooms on the side of the house with the most sun that overlooked the gardens. These were nearest the kitchen, as well. Both were lovely, and the smaller room had a desk and more sun. There was only a single bed, which felt something like a mirage in a Stark house to Peggy. Perhaps he kept it for when family of some kind visited. The larger room had one of the customary enormous beds and more furniture.

            "Why don't we flip a coin for the bigger bed?" Peggy said. Angie grew slightly shy.

            "I kind of like the idea of just having my own bed just for myself, and you having room to fit someone in there with you," Angie said.  

            "Who exactly do you think I'm going to bring over to put in there?" Peggy said, slightly offended. Angie gave a shy smile with only one side of her mouth. And Peggy understood that she was thinking of herself. She felt unsure of how to respond, a little embarrassed of how she had taken the comment, then Angie decided to go ahead and say it aloud.

            "I guess I just mean," Angie said, "I like the idea of crawling out of my bed and into yours more than I like it the other way around."

            "Oh," Peggy said. She felt herself blushing already, and they hadn't been in the house for half and hour. "Tea?" she said and lifted the kettle to change the subject. It was a rather English instinct, and Angie looked slightly amused.

            "Sure, English," Angie said brandishing her champagne glass.

            Peggy rifled around for teabags, which weren't forthcoming at first. She felt absolutely certain Stark entertained enough women from across the pond that there would be tea stashed nearby and tried not to let her mind wander to what else might be stashed in the house. Sure enough, she found a box of fine English breakfast - along with about seven other teas of different origins, matched to demographics of women no doubt - still more than half filled. She put together a pot for them. They sat down at the table with their tea, and Peggy pulled the grocery list over and showed it to Angie. Angie seemed both astonished and delighted that such a thing existed.

            "Do you want anything else?" Peggy asked her. Angie happily chatted her way through a dozen additions to the list.

            "How about you?" she asked Peggy.

            "What's there is fine for me," Peggy said with a shrug.

            "This is kind of bachelor food," Angie said. "Stuff you don’t have to cook much or at all."

            "That's fine," Peggy said.

            "You gonna' live on tinned biscuits, eggs, and ham sandwiches?" Angie asked. Peggy looked at her in a way that showed she did not get the joke. "It is kind of the same as the automat's food," Angie said thoughtfully. "Do you know how to cook, Peg?" She seemed really curious and not teasing now.

            "I know how to cook exactly eighteen meals that all fit the premium guidelines for nutrition that were available to the English government in 1934 that were taught in my course," Peggy said.

            "Okay," Angie said with the softest laugh. "Like what things?"

            "Fried eggs with bacon and sausage and toast. Whitefish with sweet potatoes and greens. Pot-roasted beef with carrots and parsnips and Yorkshire pudding," Peggy rattled off.

            "Alright. So we're talking some decent stuff," Angie said. "Why don't you take breakfast this week, and I'll take dinner."

            "Alright," Peggy said vaguely. "That seems like more work for you, though."

            "Honey, I had an Italian grandmother, Polish grandmother, and a mother who basically organized the whole neighborhood when the rations set in. I could make you a better meal with my eyes closed than you could ever find at the automat. If I ain't workin', honey, I'm cookin'. Most places I've lived didn't have a kitchen," Angie said as she glanced over at the stove. Peggy laughed.

            "Alright," she said. "Sounds lovely."

            "You don't worry about food much do you?" Angie said curiously.

            "No, I guess not," Peggy said.

            "Didn't they starve you at whichever of those English boarding schools you grew up in?" Angie asked.

            "No, actually," Peggy said. "My parents picked St. Anne's especially, because they had the best food. They were known for their athletics and believed that excellent and frequent meals were a large part of why their girls succeeded."

            "Is that how you became the fine woman you are today?"

            "Undoubtedly," Peggy said thinking of several in that environment who would make that argument quite sincerely.  

            "How'd you parents know to worry about that?" Angie asked.

            "They were both boarded and half starved growing up. I think my mother more than my father, though. His mother used to send him cakes and things all the time. She was very unhappy that he was sent away. The sight of a crumb cake even as a grown man would make him put hand to his chest and his eyes grow distant and misty." Angie thought this story was hilarious.

            "You miss your folks?" Angie asked, suddenly.

            "We write often," Peggy said. "Trade books by mail and newspaper clippings."

            "They both made it through the war?" Angie asked.

            "Barely," Peggy said. "They stayed in London for most of it, and there were several close calls."

            "What do they do?" Angie asked. There was a small pause.

            "I'm not at liberty to say," Peggy said.

            "Oh, so it runs in the family, eh?" Angie said.

            "More or less. They're both very committed to the state," Peggy said.

            "Were you lonely as a kid?" she asked. Peggy cocked her head, as if trying to comprehend the question.

            "I don't think so, no. I felt occupied most of the time," she said.

            "Occupied?" Angie said with a tinge of anxiety and horror.

            "Busy. At work. Focused on something," Peggy clarified.

            "There were seven of us kids in my house," Angie said. "So I never got lonely. But there were times, though, when I thought I might commit homicide and end up on the front of a newspaper. 'Skinny Blonde Girl Slays Siblings.'" Peggy laughed. Angie rarely seemed interested in talking about family, but she seemed at ease with it just now.

            "Brothers or sisters?" Peggy asked.

            "Half and half. Three and three," Angie said.

            "They all married?" Peggy asked.

            "Four of them are. My brother Johnny died in the war," Angie said.

            "I'm sorry, Angie," Peggy said with feeling. Angie gave a sort of shrug.

            "Me, too, I guess. He was a sweet boy, but he grew up mean as a snake. They sent a lot of medals home after him, and I wasn't surprised. I don't how he would have turned out back home to be honest," Angie said. "He was the one just older than me, and we used to fight like hell. Not as bad as him and our older sister, though. I swear she gave him more scars than he gave me."

            "Good grief," Peggy said. "At least I got to take all my aggressions out in gear with referees."

            "That's better than a free-for-all like ours, I'd wager," Angie said. "I threw a kitchen knife at him once, but it just hit the wall. He looked surprised. He was a little more tame with me after that. Honestly, it was always better between us kids when we fought amongst ourselves than when our parents lit into us. At least we had alliances and were all about the same size. Those two were big and never disagreed with each other. I tell you, I'm glad to be out of there. Every place seems peaceful to me since then."

            Peggy considered this for a long moment as she looked about their new house. The solitude and quiet seemed normal to Peggy – life on the other side of being crowded in to some institutional setting. She sifted readily between the two and eased out in a place like this, as her father would have said. She could take up space and enjoy the tranquility. She found she could not picture Angie's home.

            "Do you still speak with your folks?" Peggy asked.

            "As little as possible," Angie said. "They're still mostly interested in pushing me around."

            "How about your grandma?" Peggy asked.

            "Yeah, I go see her sometimes. Hard to sneak into the neighborhood without being noticed, though. Then everyone shows up, and I got a bunch of nieces and nephews hangin' on me while I face the Inquisition," Angie said.

            "If you want company on the trip sometime, I'd love to come with you," Peggy said.

            "You might regret having said that," Angie said with a severe sort of laugh.

            "I once spend twenty-one days in a submarine with two dozen naval officers I'd never met before," Peggy said.

            "That sounds like _way_ too much attention for me," Angie said.

            "It was rather a desperate feeling. There were two other women, at least. We banded together," Peggy said.

            "How do you use the bathroom down there?" Angie asked. Peggy gave a stern sort of look.

            "I'll draw you a diagram sometime," she said.

            "That's alright. I like to live in mystery," Angie said. "Besides, I'm sure you got better stories." Peggy looked up at her, as if to say that indeed she had. "You have to kill at me some point if you tell me too many?"

            "No," Peggy said very matter-of-fact. "Though there are a few I really can't tell, even now."

            "Fair enough," Angie said. "No one tells all their stories."

            "You don't?" Peggy asked softly.

            "Nope," Angie said with a great frankness of manner.

            She washed up their cups, then they went to explore the house. They unpacked all that day and explored the grounds and went out to an early dinner. Peggy suggested they go dancing, but Angie did not seem keen on it. They went to a film instead and walked part of the way home. Angie said she didn't usually walk the streets of New York unless she had a reason, and it seemed a different city to her tonight.

            Peggy felt like it was a great homecoming when they returned to their new place. They turned on all the lights just to look about them. They stayed up far too late talking about Peggy could not remember what the next day.

            In the days that followed, a lovely set of patterns began to develop and define their new life. Peggy woke early and by the time she finished breakfast, Angie would crawl out of bed to come eat. They each spent their days trying to establish a new life, and they'd come home to one another after. Peggy would sit at the kitchen table with a pad of paper, and they would scheme. She had discovered that Angie felt so at ease and happy in the kitchen, she could stuff perogies or cut pasta while simmering a sauce and keep up a lively conversation. So they sketched out pages about the lives they might have.

            Peggy found it difficult that first night to actually write down anything she wanted. Angie had rattled off a list of five things she really wanted in her life. Peggy thought it a simple list, all things she could get, and said so. Angie seemed a little flattered by that. Then Angie just asked her flat out.

            "What do you want for your life, Peg?" Angie said casual as if expecting a quick and ready answer.

            "Um… I don't know exactly," Peggy said.

            "Got to be somethin'," Angie said assuming Peggy was just shy. She popped cloves off of garlic and extracted them from their skins expertly as Peggy watched.

            "I've never really thought about this all, really," Peggy said.

            "What do you mean?" Angie asked. She turned a moment from the counter where she was cutting up tomatoes, onions, and peppers to give Peggy a look with her eyebrows tensed.

            "If you had asked me for years, I would have said, 'To win the war,'" Peggy said.

            "Yeah, girl, I get that. We all wanted it over and done and good riddance. But what about for yourself?" she asked. Peggy worked her lips a moment and thought very seriously.

            "That is what I wanted for myself. That or to die trying," Peggy said. She sighed and felt a little bit embarrassed. "I'm rather single-minded, I'm afraid. It's a character flaw, I suppose."

            "Nothing else you wanted, honey? You got to be able to think of somethin'. Even before the war, maybe?" Angie said.

            "Well, there was a man once," Peggy said.

            "Yeah, I remember. Steve right?" Angie said.

            "Yes. Steve Rogers," Peggy said. Angie made a "hm" of acceptance, then she thought for a few seconds before her eyes darted to Peg's.

            "You don't mean…" Angie started, but her eyebrows just went up. A long silence passed between them. And Peggy, to her own surprise, felt rather embarrassed all of a sudden.

            "Wow. Peg," Angie said. "You aim high."

            "Every time," Peggy said and gave Angie a rather meaningful look.

            "That… was that like… mutual?" Angie asked. The question seemed very gentle coming from Ang.

            "Yes, it was," Peggy said.

            "Shit, Peg," Angie said. She stood there very quiet for a moment. She shook her head finally and turned back to the counter and spoke in a lighter tone now. "Maybe the stuff you wanted was just too big and shadowed everything else out." She was quiet for a moment. "Or maybe you just need to figure out something you want as bad as you wanted those things. You just need to think of something as big as winning a war or the finest man who ever existed."

            Peggy laughed. She felt slightly teary and sniffed.  

            "Shouldn't be too much of a challenge," Peggy said with great sarcasm. She sat staring at the blank sheet of paper in front of her a moment. She sighed.

            She was about to push the paper away and sit back. She thought she would finish her cup of tea and let the conversation turn lighter. She felt a bit relieved, she realized, having told Angie that Steve was Captain America. She supposed she felt strange having been in love with an icon. He wasn't real to everyone else the way he was to Peg. Almost without thinking, she took up the pencil and wrote cavalierly on the page.

            _A world where men treat women the way Steve Rogers treated everyone._

            She sat looking it over a moment. Then she wrote another line just beneath it.

            _A world where nothing is allowed to overcome women's strength._

            She read that over, as well. There was something there, she realized. She could come back to that in the following days and find some answers, she felt sure. She sat back now feeling much better than she had in the days before.

 

            A few days after that, Peggy was home alone. Angie was out to dinner with Fran and Jill and some other folks. Peggy had declined an offer to join figuring Angie could use some time with other actors, and she herself could always use an evening of solitude.

            She had taken a long bath and sat now on her bed in a robe. She was reading a few pages of a book while she adjusted a bit to the cooler room before getting dressed for bed. Angie came in, and Peggy heard her drop her bag on the kitchen table. She called to Peggy, and Peggy answered. She came sauntering into the room.

            "Whew," she said and fell flat onto the bed.

            "How was your day, honey?" Peggy joked as she mirrored Angie.

            "It was lovely, thanks. I think I walked about five miles all told," Angie said. She sat up and took off the boots she was wearing. She crawled up into the bed and lay next to Peggy.

            "How were Fran and Jill?" she asked.

            "They were just great. They gave me so much help. I got a list of six acting schools and my top choices picked out," she said.

            "That's great," Peggy said with feeling.

            "Yep," Angie said. She was looking, Peggy realized, at Peggy's legs distractedly. She looked up and saw that Peggy had noticed.

            "Sorry," she said with a flick of her eyebrow.

            "Don't mention it," Peggy said and actually felt quite flattered. Angie seemed to have a hard time not looking at them again. She tried to shift the subject.

            "Did you get that in a knife fight?" Angie asked casually, vaguely pointing at a thin, white scar across Peggy's shin.

            "Yes," Peggy said.

            "No way," Angie said. She had been joking before, and now she looked utterly delighted.

            "No. It's quite true," Peggy said. She thought about telling the story for half an instant and describing the knife itself, a thin bladed and very sharp press-released number belonging to a German officer. But she realized that story ended with her on top of that officer using the smokestack of a train for leverage in order to slip that same knife in between his ribs and into his heart. He coughed up blood onto her lapel. Peggy was not the most experienced woman in the world when it came to domestic life, but that did not seem like the kind of story for a moment in bed such as this one.

            "You got any others?" Angie asked in astonishment.

            "Not that stayed really," Peggy said, recalling her past knife wounds. "I've got some powder burns that I didn't think would leave such scars back here," she said touching the back of her neck just under her hairline. "They didn't seem so severe at the time. But maybe I neglected them and made them worse or something." Angie leaned up a bit to glance at them before sinking back onto her elbow.

            "You got any bullet wounds to show me?" Angie asked with a smile. Peggy could tell she thought this idea rather marvelous and assumed the answer was no.

            "Yes. Only two, though, amazingly," Peggy said. Angie reacted like she told her she had been to the moon.

            "You are kidding!" she said.

            "Not in the slightest," Peggy said. She pulled one side of her robe open and down her shoulder. She said, casually. "Here, look."

            Angie was so excited, she practically scrambled up to see. She turned the lamp on the opposite side of the bed on before leaning in close. She scrutinized the wounds, and Peggy knew she could see that they really were bullet wounds. They were so distinct, they could not possibly be anything else. They had a depth to them.

            "They went through the back," Peggy said. She turned and tried to pull the robe down, so Angie could see.

            When she turned back around, Angie sat back. She shook her head. She seemed bemused and also quite astounded with Peggy.

            "I will be damned," she said softly.

            Angie looked at Peggy's face a moment. Then she looked back to her shoulder, which Peggy had not covered up yet. Peggy felt her body react to her look with an uncharacteristic embarrassment and excitement. Some kind of impulse must have come over Angie, because Peggy barely had a chance to read any sign of her intent in the next moment. She leaned over and kissed, quite suddenly, the place in Peggy's shoulder where the bullet wounds had been.

            The feel of Angie's lips on her skin gave Peggy a sort of shock. She dropped her book and heard it softly hit the blankets. It almost felt like her body drew up one flash of the pain she'd felt so long ago when she'd been hit by the two rounds. She was lucky they were from a handgun. A rifle wound in that place would have killed her for sure. But the pain she dealt with over that day and the next several made her speechless. She had never felt worse in her life.

            This flash of bodily memory contrasted starkly with the way Angie's mouth felt upon her skin in the same place now. The softness and heat seemed to penetrate and reach into her. She felt herself almost sway against it, as if she could not hold herself up easily anymore. Her hand had come to Angie's shoulder on instinct.

            As this happened, Peggy thought or rather felt, quite distinctly, that she was going to die. The feeling was unlike what she had felt in battle, when the threat of death pressed in around her. She had no mastery with which to push the feeling back, no strategy or heightened awareness with which to navigate the threat. She felt astonished by the presence of this thought as it came over her and washed through her body, deepening through muscle and bone. She felt it settle into some deep, soft part of her body, perched between the bones of her hips. This now was perhaps safer than anyplace she had been in years, in most of her life. Yet in bed with Angie, as she felt herself respond to the heat and softness of the touch of Angie's lips on the curve of her shoulder with a profound sense that she would die of the feel of it. And as she never would have in any other place, at any other time, she felt a will to succumb to that feeling. If Angie touching her body would cause it, she determined with the gentlest sort of resolve, as the feeling continued to come, that she would let herself die.

            Angie drew back from her shoulder a moment. She took one last look at the scars, as Peggy watched. At once, Angie brought her face up, and she kissed Peggy. The motion was an easy one, a seamless sort of shift from her shoulder to her lips. Peggy wondered how Angie knew that she was ready in that moment, compared to all the others before, to be kissed. Their lips met, and Peggy had only thoughts right at the first. Perhaps her lips were too stunned after being misused for some greater strategy at their expense so many times in the past to feel right away. All of a sudden, an awareness that she was really being kissed seemed to sink into her. The feelings broke out vividly and reached all through her body. They felt like the bright lines of light shot through a prism touching the various parts of her. She felt her legs shift against one another without her willing them to. Peggy knew that her skin flushed, and she felt herself grow shaky. She felt grateful when Angie's hand came to her face, and she put her own to the back of it, as they seemed to steady her.

            Angie would let go of one kiss only to start another. Their kisses were soft and strangely graceful, as if their bodies knew something about one another already. Angie had kissed her maybe a half dozen times, and she seemed then to grow more conscious of Peggy and to ease back. She said nothing as she studied Peggy's face, gauging if she were alright. Peggy trusted that she read what was there simply by looking over her face. Then Peggy saw Angie's focus turn inward towards her own response. She took a deep breath, and it came out heavy.

            Peggy could feel in the silence that followed that they were simply not prepared yet to kiss one another yet again. So Peggy reached and brought Angie's hand up and opened it against her own, so that their fingers each touched one another. As she had suspected, she could see both trembling slightly. Angie looked at their hands with the faintest smile, before she looked at Peggy's face, and the smile deepened just slightly.

            Peggy could not remember after what they'd spoken about the rest of that night. Their conversation seemed hushed, easy still, but with less humor than usual. Peggy slipped away to put on her pajamas at some point, and Angie wandered off to do the same. Angie ended up sleeping beside her that night, and Peggy reached over when they turned out the lamps and settled in to hold her hand.

            As they were lying there in the dark next to one another, Peggy felt both closer to Angie than she ever had yet been and yet quite aware of how distant and distinct they were in the silence. She felt she did not know even what to ask, and she faded off to sleep without any words spoken between them about having kissed.

            Peggy woke at 5a.m. She slipped out of bed. She knew Angie would sleep for a good while longer. She always slept late when she did not have a morning shift, and she seemed to be catching up on rest still. Peggy went outside to exercise in the cool morning air, eased her way back into the house to shower, and made breakfast. The smell of food, as always, brought Angie out of bed.

            She seemed more tired than usual to Peggy. As Peggy served her up a eggs and bacon, she found that Angie broke eye contact with her quickly. Peggy felt nervous a moment, as she found this entirely uncharacteristic. Perhaps they had made a mistake after all, she thought, as she served herself and sat down to eat. That would be alright, Peggy thought as she ate, although she had to admit she would be disappointed and a little bit surprised. Perhaps Angie had felt something quite different than Peggy and also quite different than what she had thought.

            Peggy thought more about it and grew somewhat more confident as she cleaned up after breakfast, while Angie went to get ready for her day. She was going out, Peggy knew, to meet with Fran for lunch and to start visiting acting schools. Peggy had plans to go out, as well, to buy books, write letters, and generally get organized about her life. She intended to find some friends in New York, and she had thought of several wartime friends she might inquire about by mail. The letters would bounce to offices in Washington, D.C. and England, but they were likely to arrive. She knew everyone who was dead. That news traveled regardless, she had found. She felt that she would like to say something to Angie before they each went out for the day, so they would have that time to think and could come back more easy with one another than they were now.

            Angie seemed to sort of freeze when she came into the kitchen, dressed and ready to go out. Peggy felt slightly distressed and swallowed hard, and she could tell Angie was trying to think of something to say. She had her bag in her hand and looked a bit trapped in this moment.

            "Are you alright?" Peggy asked. Angie's breath seemed quickened. She looked like a startled animal, Peggy thought, like she might bolt out the front door. Peggy gave her a look then of open distress and amazement.

            "I think I'm just… a little rattled," Angie said. Peggy knew it was about them kissing the night before. She wanted to say something more.

            "If it didn't work for you, Ang, it's alright. I won't be offended," Peggy said. She came over to touch Angie's arm once and lean into the counter near her. Angie did not respond badly to the touch, but it did not seem to help much either. She seemed almost distracted away from Peggy, in fact.

            "Nah', Peg, it did," Angie said. She seemed to break free for a moment of her strangely frozen demeanor. Peggy could see her feelings were quite complicated underneath this. She seemed very serious, almost grave to Peggy. Angie was quiet a moment and her hand went to the center of her stomach, involuntarily, as if remembering how it had felt when they kissed the night before. At the sight of it, Peggy knew she had not been alone in how she felt or misguessed Angie's response. Angie had been right there with her. Angie was looking for something to say, and she grew so overwhelmed, Peggy saw that her eyes welled up a bit. "I want ya', girl," Angie said. "I just… I need to figure out what I'm doing, who am I just now." She held up her hand as if trying to steady herself or keep some things at bay.

            Peggy gave the softest smile. She could not help but feel flattered at this comment. She felt a bit worried still about Angie's strange mood, more for not understanding than anything. She wanted to tell her, at least, that they could at least ease off for a while.

            "I will keep, you know," Peggy said quite casually and gently. She smiled at Angie along with the joke. Angie smiled and gave one slight, soft laugh.

            Peggy stepped in and drew Angie into a hug and held her there close. Angie held her back and seemed to relax in how safe she could tell the embrace was. Peggy's worry went away more. She had felt worried almost that Angie was afraid of her now that they'd kissed, strange as that seemed after she took Peggy being a trained killer quite in stride. But it was not that, she could feel. Angie put her forehead against Peggy's shoulder. She seemed really overcome to Peggy, and she thought it would not be right to ask her about it all just now in the midst of it. So she just held onto her for another moment.

            "Just remember that we were friends first, alright?" Peggy said. She rubbed her hands over Angie's shoulders briefly.

            "Alright," Angie said. She seemed to have grown more easy when they let each other go. "Wish me luck," she said, when she stood back.

            "Godspeed, Martinelli," Peggy said as if she were a soldier. Angie smiled fully at this, as she went out the door.

            Peggy came round and made the bed – their bed, as she was thinking of it suddenly after last night. Maybe she ought to get more rattled herself, she realized. Her lips almost seemed to vibrate and remind her of what it had been like. It was difficult to feel distressed about a feeling like that, honestly. She thought about what Angie had said a few minutes ago. They'd have to just see it out.

 

            Angie came home that evening quite energized. She had chosen an acting school, gone down and spoken with their office, and she was signed up. The timing was uncannily perfect, she said. She would join the group next week.

            "It's a sign," Peggy said. "It means you're supposed to be there." Angie laughed softly. Her eyes were happier than Peggy thought than she had ever seen them.

            Angie kept looking at the floor, thinking. She bit her lip slightly. Then she looked up at Peg.

            "Sorry if I… freaked you out this morning," she said. She looked a little embarrassed and worried, Peggy thought. Peggy tried to show openly how she felt, so that Angie would know she was fine .

            "It's quite alright," she said.

            "Yeah," Angie said with a softer smile than Peggy had seen from her all day. "It's always alright with you, eh? I guess you know when things are really worth getting worked up over." Peggy laughed at this and gave a sort of severe cock of her head.

            "I hope so, anyway," she said. She added plainly, "I hope you don't feel pressured, Ang. Whatever you decide is quite alright with me."

            "I know," Angie said. "And it's not – like I said." She seemed then to lose the thread of what she wanted to say. She stood quiet for a moment. Peggy watched her face in silence.

            "You know I joked before that I'd never been kissed," Angie said.

            "Yes, I remember," Peggy said.

            "I think now, that, that was true. I never done that before, what I did with you. Nothin' even remotely like," she said. She gave a sort of smile and tried to make light of it, but Peggy saw Angie's eyes well up. She took a deep breath and swallowed.

            "Well, that does make two of us," Peggy said. Angie smiled a little and seemed to lose a little of her seriousness, and she opened up a bit more to Peg.

            "I got a lot 'a history that's catchin' up with me," Angie said. She sort of blanched and shook her head just a bit. Peggy cocked her head slightly.

            "How do you mean?" Peggy asked.

            "It's just… everything. This place, being away from work, even just… bein' with you. I don't know how to explain so you understand," she said, "But every voice in the world says a girl like me doesn't deserve things like this, Peg."

            Peggy felt an urge to argue, but she considered this deeply and tried to understand what Angie meant instead.

            "I feel like this could be my break," Angie said. "The real one that starts things off on a new footing. When things turn around. I got all these things I've wanted, all of a sudden. I feel like… I don’t know. Like I got to keep up with myself to be able to meet with it. Otherwise, I'll just fall apart."

            Peggy listened closely. She nodded to Angie. She knew she did not understand it all, but she didn't need to. She just needed to understand enough to keep the two of them oriented around what the other one needed and what the other one wanted. Both would undoubtedly change in time.

            " You know, it's real nice being around you, 'cause you don't buy into all this stuff," Angie said looking around the house. "You see right through it. You're just not interested, not impressed, and not the least intimidated at all," Angie said.

            "No, you're right, I don't care about any of this," Peggy said truthfully.

            "I wanna' not care, but there's somethin' about what you know people think you can't possibly have," Angie said. She shrugged. "I'll get past it. It's all just stuff, I know. There are more important things I want." She gave Peggy a meaningful look, and Peggy smiled, feeling a little bit flattered.

            "All in good time," Peggy said.

            "Yeah," Angie said. Peggy saw her look worried. It would be alright, she told herself, and she steered them towards lighter conversation, careful to ensure there was no awkwardness between them when they each went to bed alone.


	5. Sharing That Cup of Sugar

            The weeks passed in their new place, as both women tried to establish themselves in new and better lives. Peggy searched out old friends from the service. Most were not living in New York, but she picked up letter correspondence with some. She found a friend, Sarah, by mail whom she knew before the war. Sarah was her best friend in boarding school at St. Anne's. They were the fiercest pair of lacrosse players the school had ever seen and redefined what it meant to slide. Peggy found her alive and well living in Liverpool and married she said to a very kind and generous man who had been a pilot during the war. She had named one of her daughters Margaret and called her Peggy, she said.

            For some reason, Peggy felt surprised that Sarah remembered her, which felt irrational now. She realized that she had tried to forget Sarah herself and everyone else from before the war. Up until now, she had avoided trying to find her for fear that she had died, then for fear that somehow her connection to Peggy would prove dangerous somehow. Peggy had imagined in some only partly conscious way that in a few years after the war, the danger would clear up and clear out. She would be able to live freely again and pick up the threads of her old life. She seemed to be trying instead to consciously untangle the threads of her wartime life from her life now. It did not simply fall away from her, as she must have imagined it would.

            Peggy's search had not turned up many friendships as of yet, but she did not feel lonely at present, as Angie grew fully engulfed in a set of acting classes and Peggy found that now was a time when she could offer Angie a great deal of much needed support as her friend. She realized she had not actually known Angie intimately enough to recognize how intimidated she felt by acting. Up until now, she had been trying to approach it very much alone. Fran and Jill were her first friends who could offer support and advice.

            Angie used to run lines through alone at her mirror at the Griffith, because she never had anyone to ask to run them along with her. Peggy's past work made her oddly good at this kind of thing. She ran lines with Angie time and again. When Angie grew nervous, Peggy realized, she grew less animate and lost some of her tone. When this happened, she seemed like, well, like anyone else to Peggy. She guessed that Angie was not standing out in her auditions , because her anxiety made it so that she could not really be detected on the surface who she really was. She seemed almost relieved to learn this about herself as she worked with Peggy, who told her the truth and also approached everything as simply a set of problems to be solved.

            Peggy made an incidental discovery that proved a breakthrough that enabled Angie in her new work. One night when they felt a bit pressed for time, Peggy discovered that if she ran lines with Angie while she cooked, which kept her body and whatever part of her mind it took to orchestrate a meal occupied, she did much better at memorizing and interpreting the underlying depths of the lines on her own. She would add nuance and tone, readily and without self-consciousness. When they ran them after, her body would take up whatever emotional pitch she had woven into the scene. Peggy thought the change rather remarkable. She gained a new depth of focus and seemed to wield a sort of confidence now, perhaps because the mastery she felt in cooking shifted over into her acting. So Peggy ran lines with her nearly every night after that, as she cooked, not just what she had to practice for class, but also other plays that she found compelling. Peggy was delighted and proud to play a vital role in all of this. It had been a long time since she had really contributed to another person's life so intimately. It felt a rare pleasure.

            Angie confessed to Peggy that she always turned down dancing, because she did not know how to dance. Her parents thought it too much to let her or her sisters go dancing, probably, Angie said, because that was how they met. Angie's school did not actually teach dancing, and she thought she might find another class someplace just for that. Peggy offered to teach her to dance, and after a slight hesitation Angie said they should give it a try.

            The two of them lifted the couches and end tables and tucked them into one corner of the sitting room. Peggy rolled up the carpet and propped it in a corner. Angie grew so worried about the hardwood floor that Peggy offered that they could take off their shoes, otherwise she thought Angie might not go through with it. Peggy pulled out a few records and set them playing on Howard's gramophone, which proved capable of producing very fine sound. They started to dance every night after dinner, and Angie quickly lost her self-consciousness and began to pick up quickly on whatever Peggy ran her through.

            At times, Peggy would consider the fact that they had not yet kissed again after they had that first night. The thought would come to her almost suddenly, as if in between, she would forget. There were times, regardless of whether they had kissed since that first time, when it felt to Peggy like they were already lovers. She would forget everything else except the dance they were sharing. It would seem an easy thing to turn and kiss Angie on the neck or meet her lips. There seemed to be an open place there, waiting for Peggy. But Peggy never sensed that Angie was ready to meet her there. So she never turned her face to kiss her. She just held her close, often with Angie's head rested on her shoulder, and danced. And if felt very much the same to Peg as a romance. She gained the same gentleness and fullness, the life-giving quality of holding a lover near to herself.

 

            One day in the midst of the routines they had made, Peggy noticed a flower shop with an open front and a display of bouquets in tubs on the sidewalk. Her step slowed as she neared and noticed the particularly fine bouquets laced with orange and yellow and red. She thought in the moment of buying one and taking it home to give to Angie.

            She had the thought then that she should wait until Angie finished her first class or landed her first gig to buy her flowers in order to celebrate. Peggy leaned down and carefully picked out a bouquet, having decided in a moment that her first thought was a rather foolish one. That was not how one should ought to relate to the future, which was never a guarantee. People died; they went away. No one ever really predicted any of it. That was one bit of wisdom she had gained during the war. She felt she ought not to let it fade away. She felt lost deep in her own thoughts as she paid the woman running the shop.

            "Beautiful flowers for a beautiful lady," the woman said. Peggy liked the sound of her Italian accent. She smiled warmly.

            "Yes they are," she said. She nodded her thanks.

            She carried the flowers down the street, trying not to feel conspicuous. A woman could carry flowers, she knew, and no one would know the difference. She actually used flowers to carry a piece of intelligence or a weapon in the past. Now they concealed her own heart. Anyone who saw would automatically assume she bought them for herself in a flight of fancy or was taking them home to her mother or grandmother. _They're for my best friend, who's likely to become my lover,_ Peggy thought of saying to someone if they grew nosey and asked. But she knew she wouldn't really, as she was more or less happy with her situation, she realized, so the rash mood was not on.

            Peggy had to wonder as she walked down the street with the bouquet whether she might have one day been so inclined to buy Steve flowers if they'd had a romance. And she wondered whether she would really have bought them in that case. And whether he would have liked them or not. She had an irrational inclination to believe that he would have.

            Peggy greeted Angie when she came in. Angie was already making dinner and the house smelled like heaven to Peggy and distracted her for a moment. They shared a few words.

            "You get flowers from someone?" Angie asked looking very amused.

            "Um, no," Peggy said, remembering, and cleared her throat. "These are for you." She quelled a momentary instinct to brandish them at Angie, which would have been rather awkward given that Angie's hands were covered in flour.

Angie actually started in surprise, and her eyebrows stayed up. She smiled in a sort of astonished delight. She looked only a slightly abashed, which was far less than Peggy felt in this moment.

            "Goodness, English," Angie said softly. A moment passed between them. "You still sweet on me, even after I strung you along this much?"

            "Don’t be ridiculous, Angie," Peggy said. Angie looked really happy in a quiet sort of way. Peggy knew for certain then that she did not regret the choice of bringing home her gift.

            "Thanks, love," Angie said softly. She turned back to the counter, a little bit shy. Peggy felt returned to full confidence now. She came and filled a vase with water, and touched Angie's low back before she turned to put the flowers on the table. She brought dishes out and chatted with Angie as she finished their meal.

Angie told Peggy about her day in class with a mind towards making Peggy laugh at her stories, as usual. She noticed Peggy seemed somewhat serious and cut her stories short to ask about her day. Peggy had gone to meet a friend she had located in New York, Anya Remizov. She and Anya met doing covert ops in northern Germany. They had not tried to keep in contact after their shared mission ended, as they were both too difficult to locate for reasons of great importance. Peggy felt surprised to find her in New York and invited her to a drink. She stood under a streetlight so Anya could suss her out before approaching. Sure enough, she turned up in a dark trench coat and hat that made her almost invisible on the street, from behind and to the side of Peggy, approaching in her blind spot. Peggy caught sight of her only because Peggy scanned the street around her out of habit.

            Peggy felt very serious now after visiting with Anya. They had sat at a back table in a very quiet bar. Anya had a patch over her left eye, and Peggy thought she could detect thick make up around it to cover up what were likely burn scars. Anya talked mostly of the war, telling Peggy what she could of all she had accomplished after they had parted. She had become more of an assassin by the end of the war. Once she killed four commanding German officers on a train full of sleeping German servicemen, leaving them to find themselves leaderless when the arrived at their destination with Anya having leapt the train and no suspect to be found. She put the terror into them in her part of Germany.

            Peggy asked her about life after the war. Her situation seemed at once bland and dire. Peggy took the impression that she had been very isolated these past years. She'd been out on her own mostly with her missions late in the war. That must have made an even harder transition. Peggy felt gripped by some of the similarities with her own story, which she found she did not like to admit to Anya. It seemed like they had to confess they were not the women they had known one another to be during the war. There was no sign, however, that Anya thought poorly of Peggy. She asked very savvy questions about her position in the SSR and seemed to understand Peggy's situation perfectly.

            "I think she mostly reads books and goes to the movies and thinks about the war," Peggy said. Her voice came out sadder than she had expected.

            "That does actually sound worse for someone like you than what you put up with at your office," Angie admitted. She brought over the raviolis she had made. Angie liked Peggy's food fine, but had taken over permanent custody of dinner except on Sundays. She had begun to teach Peggy to cook now and again when she felt patient and didn't care to work lines through. They were interrupted by the food a moment, but Angie looked to Peggy to continue when she sat down across from her.

            "She said she might return to Russia. She was unhappy there, even before the war, and she did not seem very excited about the idea. But she said at least she can get some respect and likely a mission there of whatever sort. Being Russian and a woman feels like too much for her here," Peggy said.

            "You think that's true that she'd find somethin' more over there?" Angie asked.

            "Yes, I imagine so. She has incredible talent. Although I don’t like to think who she'd be working for. I'm not sure she'd really get to choose," Peggy said. Angie gave a huff that implied, most of us don't. Peggy grew very quiet and distracted. Angie's eyes on her from across the table made her aware of how sad she was feeling.

            "We lost so much," Peggy said. "We lost all the intimacies afforded by war. All these people I thought I knew, I knew them in a different world, a different life. They were different people then, and so was I. We don't know how to connect to one another now. There's no shared sense of purpose to draw us close, no mission." Angie listened quietly, and she looked very concerned.

            "I don’t understand how this could have happened," Peggy said. "We shifted out of wartime and into peace, and I found myself still mired in conflict every day and with less dignity now." Angie's head rose slightly.

            "You got dignity, honey," Angie said. "You're probably just reeling still from a shift in who's on your side. I've been here the whole time, so I saw a different side of this change from peace to war and back again. It wasn't so simple as it probably seemed over there, with all the fear and horror for a distraction. I bet you all fantasized about home and made it something it could never really be." Peggy listened closely as she considered this. It felt true. Angie went on.

            "For a lot of us women, the best time of our lives was when all the men were away. It's a damn shame sayin' it. Those poor chumps were off suffering God only knows what and telling themselves it was all for us back home. And then we lost something when they came home. I think they hate us even more, 'cause they can feel it," Angie said.

            "I feel that war is all I actually know how to engage," Peggy said. "It's all I'm good for in a way."

            "No," Angie said defiantly. "You just… got used, Peg. We all do. They took you out and let you do what you were capable of when it served the interest of the state to let you do it, and everyone felt so desperate to win the war. The excellence of who you were then didn't threaten anyone. Now they want to put you back in a box, keep you out of the way. They're afraid of you, Peg. They gotta' make you small, so they can feel in control again." Peggy listened in silence.

            "When did you get so wise?" Peggy asked. She smiled at Angie, but she felt her eyes could not smile just now.

            "Honey, this is just the story of what it is to be a woman," Angie said. Her words sounded very much to Peggy like Thompson's words of not so very long ago. She had to put down her fork and let her forehead rest in her hands a moment. She felt ashamed at how overwhelmed she became with sadness. She was almost brought to tears quite suddenly.

            Peggy remembered once, in the early part of the war, when she had been drinking to celebrate a successful mission. She ended up pushing a Sergeant against the wall of the bar with a German trench knife at his throat for putting his hand up her skirt from behind when she was leaned over and distracted. She felt a flicker of fear that she'd start a bar fight, as she came more to her senses. But she looked around, and all the other men stood back. They did not want to die. A few men who smiled or laughed and did not look threatened did so, because they were all on her side. Some of the ones at her table, drinking with her, didn't laugh. She remembered that vividly. It almost felt to Peggy that there had been room for open violence during war in a way that she missed now. She thought of threatening Angie's customer who had been testing her and interrupting his designs. How rarely she could do that now.

            "This world's gonna' change," Angie said. "You wait and see, honey. Women ain't weak. We all still feel guilty about what the men suffered in war. That will fade. We're not gonna' let the fella's have everything just 'cause they got a sob story to tell, no matter how horrible. Some day, you'll see, we'll finally take our share."

            "Do you see a promise of that?" Peggy said and in her voice it was clear that she could not see any such vision, at least not this night. Angie sort of cocked her head at Peggy.

            "Of course," Angie said. "I see it every day." She kept her look on Peggy for a long moment, as if to ensure her of the reality of this vision and much of a role Peggy played in it. Angie shook her head a moment. "You taught me all kinda' things about strength, Peg. I feel worried for you. It's like you're giving it away without gettin' any back. What do you think you need, honey?"

            "A squadron," Peggy said with a sort of huff of sarcastic laughter. Angie cocked her head again.

            "What does that mean?" Angie said.

            "It means, a team, a complimentary set. People who together can accomplish a mission," Peggy said.

            "You can find that I bet," Angie said.

            "Where?" Peggy said in a sort of mild challenge, surprised at Angie's confidence. Angie looked at her a moment.

            "Or else you can make it," Angie said and shrugged.

            Peggy thought in a sort of flash of the things she had accomplished in war. She remembered back to how assertive she had become with Chief Douley and Thompson surrounding the mission in Russia not even a handful of months before. That woman felt like herself in a way she had not been in so long. She had begun to wonder is she were even real. What had changed in that moment? she wondered. Why had the real Agent Carter emerged?

            "I got all the faith in you in the world," Angie said. Peggy looked up to see her look, steady and sincere. She did not care for Peggy any less for all her weakness of spirit at the time when they had met. She had seen past it somehow. She saw through it now. Peggy felt like Angie could see her, truly, even as she lost sight of herself.

            Peggy reached her hand across the table a moment, as she had grown speechless. Angie gripped her hand for a moment. They were quiet for most of the time they finished their dinner. Peggy knew she would have to think through their conversation for days.

 

            The next night after Peggy had brought Angie flowers, as they sat Peggy's bed after dinner and a short round of rather energetic dancing, Angie jokingly called Peggy a "woman of the world." For some reason, this caught Peggy unprepared. She grew quite embarrassed.

            "Goodness, please, don’t say that," Peggy said.

            "Why, too risqué?" Angie joked.

            "No, it just. I don't know. It makes me self-conscious of my inexperience," Peggy said. Angie's eyebrows cocked, and Peggy could see she did not believe her.

            "A little beneath your dignity, you mean," Angie said.

            "I'm not a prude, Angie, if that's what you think," Peggy said. She had not thought it through before she said it, and her tone came out annoyed, but it was unthreatening. Angie looked at her a moment, as if thinking. Her eyebrows flicked up a moment, and she seemed to feel that she had been called out.

            "Maybe I just can't relate, so I make things up to sort of fill you in," Angie said.               

"Don't relate to what? What do you mean?" Peggy said leaning back curiously. Angie thought for a moment. She had to give a shrug.

            "Whatever it is that defines a woman's relationship to sex," Angie said.

            "I'm not sure I've been 'defined' in that way at all," Peggy said. Angie looked at her more concentrated now.

            "You know just who you are it seems like to me," Angie said.

            "That doesn't mean I know anything about sex," Peggy said. She felt herself flush slightly.

            "I didn't mean ta' hurt ya', Peg," Angie said. She reached over and touched Peggy's sleeve. Peggy realized that she was feeling a bit offended. She tried to shake it off and sat up a bit. Angie seemed to be thinking hard.

            "All the girls at the Griffith, you never seemed like you judged any of them, did you?" Angie said.

            "No, why?" Peggy said.

            "No one except Howard Stark," Angie said with a wry sort of grin.

            "Howard Stark uses women and leaves a trail of harm in his wake," Peggy said. Even she noticed how sharp her tone became at once.

            "Yeah, I know. But the other women, even the ones who slept around, you never thought nothing bad about them," Angie said.

            "Why should I?" Peggy said. Angie gave a sort of mild, astonished laugh.

            "I judged plenty of 'em myself," she said. Peggy looked over at her for a long moment. She remembered Angie liking some of the other women more than others. There did seem to be something about it tied up with their relationship to sex. She did not like the one's who did not respect themselves, Peggy had thought at the time. Peggy did not really see it that way, but she could not explain in words quite how she felt instead.

            "People judge me," Angie said. "And then I turn around and do the same damn thing." She gave a sort of hard, one-sided smile. Her tone felt tinged with cynicism and regret. She took a deep breath and let it out. She looked over at Peg and her eyes were sad for a moment. "Peg, you mind telling me why you haven't had any lovers before?"

            "I haven't found one I wanted on terms I could accept," Peggy said. Angie just nodded. She swallowed then and blinked slowly. She seemed lost in thought.

            "I wondered why you'd want me, after keepin' yourself for so long," Angie said. Peggy felt a bit angry, but it was not quite anger at Angie.

            "I intend to _keep_ myself when I am with you, if I ever get to be," Peggy said, "As well as forever after." Angie smiled at that.

            "I never kept myself at all," Angie said flashing Peggy a look. Her eyes seemed strangely lifeless. Peggy felt herself disconcerted.

            "What do you mean, love?" she asked softly.

            "I'm just sayin', you know I ain't no virgin. I can't give you that. Wish I was, but I'm just not," Angie said. Peggy grew very serious and spoke calmly, so there could be no doubt of her sincerity.

            "I don't value you or want you any less for that," Peggy said.  

            Angie looked at Peggy for a moment. She smiled, and it seemed genuine. Her eyes still looked a bit sad still, but the life was coming back into them. She took another deep breath.

            "Yeah," Angie said. "I get that now. You're somethin'." She laughed softly and looked at the bed.

            On a sort of instinct, Peggy leaned over and put her hand to Angie's face, drew her near, and kissed her cheek on the other side. Angie's eyes met hers for a moment then moved quickly away. A long silence passed.

            Angie surprised Peggy then by turning and kissing her on the lips quite suddenly. A small sound came from Peggy's chest in response just as Angie's hand touched her there. She felt all the feelings she had that first night, as they came over her in a rush. Apparently, her body remembered as if there had not been a moment of time since that night. She felt a little abashed by the depth of her own reaction.

            Angie touched Peggy's face and looked at her fully now. To Peggy's delight, she could see the desire plainly in her expression again. Peggy watched Angie's eyes and face for a long moment, as if to drink it in. She had to laugh at herself, then, and Angie laughed softly with her, knowing, Peggy felt sure, her thoughts.

            Peggy lay back on the pillows with a sigh. She was quiet for a moment, and she thought about how full her chest felt. She loved Angie, that much was for sure. Peggy patted the mattress beside her after a moment, unworried about the answer she received in response.

            "There's a place right here for you tonight if you want it," she said. Angie smiled, and Peggy saw the light, playful demeanor she knew so well come back. Angie bit her bottom lip slightly and looked pleased and a bit shy.

            "That's a rare moment in life," Angie said. She shifted back with a drop into the pillows and settled herself in with an overdramatic wiggle. Peggy laughed softly at the sight.

            "What is?" Peggy said.

            "When you get offered a place right where you want it," Angie said looking at her with a delighted smile still on her face.

****

They kissed every night and a few times during the day after that. Peggy could not quite decipher what would trigger it. She and Angie would be talking or standing near one another. Then they would be drawing each other close or kissing. Sometimes it was something in how their eyes met. Or an edge to something that was said. Peggy felt mystified in a way. She had never had this experience before. She was not an agent managing operations now, and she had no idea what the chain of events or outcomes would be. She just went along, enjoying every moment of it. She knew she wanted Angie. And she knew Angie wanted her. That was all that mattered to her these days.

            They had just finished dancing one night, when somehow everything felt uniquely quiet and heavy between them. Peggy wore a red dress tied in the back. Soon after, they were standing Peggy's room, still having not spoken. Peggy had a thought about getting out her clothes for bed. She turned and looked at Angie standing there in silence. Angie's eyes looked to her unusually heavy and soft. Peggy turned back to the dresser and felt herself swallow, but she did not move.

            After a long pause, Angie came over, standing a bit behind and beside Peggy. She reached out and touched Peggy's waist. She let the ribbons of the bow slip through her hands.

            "Peg," Angie said. "Can I take this off?" She said it soft and light, so that Peggy felt sure it would have been easy for her to say no.

            "Yes," Peggy said without much pause. She interrupted Angie as she had just began to pull gently at the bow. "Just so long as you will let me see you, as well," Peggy said and turned so she could see her response.

            Peggy saw a flicker of hesitation or shyness come across Angie's face, but she smiled and focused again on undoing the bow, clearly in agreement. She untied it, then turned Peggy around and undid the handful of buttons on the front, her hands trailing down between Peggy's breasts. Peggy felt her own heart beat hard.

            Peggy helped by shifting her shoulders free as Angie drew the dress down. She did this very slowly, and her hands ran over Peggy's arms as she did. Peggy stood in the ivory colored underclothes she had been wearing beneath. Angie slid the dress down over her hips then let her hands rest for a moment on Peggy's hips after it had fallen to the floor.

            Angie stepped back a step and pulled Peggy with her, so that Peggy could step out of the heap of fabric piled at her feet. She'd already drawn the straps down from Peggy's top when by the time she settled her weight and stood still again. Angie ran her hands across Peggy's naked shoulders.

            Peggy moved in and drew Angie close and kissed her. She continued kissing her as she un-tucked Angie's shirt. She undid her skirt and let it fall and unbuttoned the blouse she wore from the bottom up and drew it back off of her. Still standing close with their foreheads pressed against one another, Peggy removed the last of her clothing. At once, Peggy helped her to take off the rest of her own clothes. She kissed Angie once more, as they now they stood naked together, though they'd remained so close together there was a sort of privacy still.

            As Peggy kissed Angie, she reached to hold her hands.   She slowly parted their lips from one another's and stepped back. She let go Angie's hands and swallowed hard as she forced herself to straightened up fully, and allow herself to be seen entirely. Her hands had come to her hips in a sort of response to her felt sense of self-consciousness. The two of them stood and looked at one another's bodies, fully exposed to one another for the very first time.

            "Jesus, Peggy," Angie said in almost a whisper. "Look at you." She seemed deeply distracted, as if she could not take Peggy in enough.

            Angie took a step and reached out to let her fingertips barely brush Peggy's arm, as they ran down it quickly. Peggy caught loosely at her hand.

            She felt distracted and overcome herself trying to take in what Angie's body looked like to her, how it felt. She looked so tall and long now that the shape of her was rendered so simple. It was like her mind could not fully absorb the image. Somehow she had not been quite prepared for this. She'd been naked before with a dozen women at once and even with a dozen men. But those were in frantic situations, where their bodies were uncovered so that they could change into gear, and they felt merely exposed for the briefest instant, often to far more present threats than one another's sight.

            This nakedness was another thing entirely. It was meant for her, an intentional revealing, that felt overwhelming. Peggy felt that her hand had come to the center of her stomach. Peggy felt she did not know how to honor this gift she was receiving from Angie.

            Angie, she realized, had grown nervous. Peggy could not tell why she was overwhelmed and whether her feelings were the same as her own. Angie caught her eyes and made a shy sort of smile, as if to make a joke about herself.

            "I guess I always sort of thought you'd just take over at this point," Angie said. She laughed softly once, and she turn her eyes down again. The joke, between the two of them, was gentle and held more of Angie's uncertainty and vulnerability in it than the tease that carried it. She was referencing how she once thought of Peggy as the more sexually experienced one, the professional even.

            "Well, I can get us past this part," Peggy said. She was, in fact, a professional, after all.

            She stepped close to Angie and kissed her and drew her right in to herself. The way she moved communicated a disciplined confidence, the kind that Angie had always intuited was there. Only as they continued to hold onto one other and to kiss did Angie feel Peggy become herself. Her heart began to race and her hands to tremble.

            Their kisses were taking on their own life now, however, that moved, drawing out, more and more, a passion between them that might overshadow even their most profound timidity. Peggy felt how Angie's hands began to move. She ran them over the length of Peggy's body, then did it again and again. She would bring her hands up and stroke her from her shoulders all the way down to the small of her back and draw at her slightly by the waist, as if to keep her in closer. When she circled her arms around Peggy's hips and drew her near, a small sound escaped Peggy's throat. She had grown almost heavy at the feel of Angie's touch, and she would have rested her head on Angie's shoulder were she not so caught up in their kissing.

            Angie must have sensed this, for she then felt Angie holding her face in her hands. Peggy felt herself holding onto Angie, her hands at Angie's hips. Then Angie's hands touched her throat. Within moments, Peggy felt her breasts as they were held in Angie's palms. Her own lips parted, and she drew in her breath in a sort of gasp. Angie's tongue touched hers once, and she kissed each of her parted lips lightly. Her hands, however, held Peggy firmer and pressed deeper, so that Peggy could not understand how she could at once remain so gentle. A sound escaped her now, giving full evidence to her pleasure as she was being touched. She was practically swaying into Angie's hands now, as she softly kneaded her breasts. Then Angie let go and only her fingertips were on Peggy's nipples working them gently.

            Peggy kissed her desperately, almost involuntarily, and drew her closer. She felt her body rise up, as if unsure whether to draw away or press into the touch and make it firmer. She had drawn in her breath, and she seemed caught there unable to let it out. Angie let her go, all at once, and her hands were on Peggy's throat again. She held Peggy near a moment. Peggy was almost breathless.

            "Is it too much?" she asked, as she kissed Peggy's jaw. Released from Angie's touch upon her breasts, Peggy regained herself quickly. And instead of answering her question, she took hold of Angie, almost lifting her as she dragged her fully against herself with a hand to the back of her neck in order to tip her face up and kissed her a deep and passionate kiss unlike any they'd yet shared. She felt Angie's legs practically buckle, and her weight shift against her own body as she held onto her shoulders. Their kisses were long now, searching, an act of lovemaking in and of themselves that drew all their attention. Angie held onto Peggy.

            "Come to bed with me," Peggy said when at last she could find enough space in her mind to form the words.

            "You got it," Angie said immediately. Peggy spent just one moment reading the full consent held in her expression. They both moved towards the bed at once.

            Peggy leaned back into the pillows first, with Angie crawling in just behind her. Angie, instead of coming in bedside her, crawled right overtop of her. Seeing Angie raised up over her made Peggy suddenly aware of what they were doing. She was astonished to find that she did not feel even the slightest edge of shame or regret. She felt instead a sort of overwhelmed awe. She looked at Angie's body, as Angie drew Peggy's hands to her sides. She touched her with both hands and felt a sort of reverence, an astonishment that life would allow her such an experience of another person as this one. Especially with Angie, whom Peggy held so dear.

            "Oh, Ang," Peggy said softly. "I'm almost afraid to touch you. You seem like a thing divine." She moved her hands over Angie's sides as she spoke, and her hands felt that they could only move slowly and gently in this moment. Angie grew a bit overwhelmed, it seemed, and gave a soft laugh.

            "Jesus, Peg," she said. She hid her face in her hand for a moment and sort of peaked around it before meeting Peggy's look again. "Your pillow talk is so sweet, you're gonna' make me cry." She put her hand to Peggy's shoulder.

            "No, don't cry," Peggy said with an edge of urgency in her voice, making Angie laugh once. "Is it really that much to take?" she asked mildly. She felt her hand rest in the small of Angie's back. Angie's eyes flicked up to meet hers.

            "Best I ever got before was, 'You look good, dame,'" Angie said flatly in a joking man's tone. Peggy did not want to know whether the story were serious or not. And she really did not want any such memories to interrupt what was happening now.

            She sat up more, bracing herself easily, and put her arms fully around Angie's body and held onto her. Her face was tipped up slightly toward Angie's, so she could meet her look. She let her hands run over the length of Angie's back. Angie grew very heavy, she felt, and quite still.

            "I'll tell you as mildly as you like," Peggy said. "But I am going to tell you what I see." She brought one hand around and touched Angie's chest, beneath her throat. She felt her breath underneath softly lifting her collar bone and ribs. "And that is a woman who is utterly beautiful."

            Peggy kissed Angie's chest briefly where her hand had been. She felt Angie's breath catch a moment, as when one has been weeping. Angie turned Peggy's face up and kissed her lips, and Peggy felt her kiss come deep and uninhibited now. The feelings it evoked in her swept away Peggy's self-consciousness along with much of her conscious thought. There was just all she felt in this moment and the emergence of desire she only thought enough to move towards and fulfill.

            They kissed over and over with their hands running across one another's skin. Finally, Peggy's body grew slightly fatigued, which broke through the sort of trance she was in. Angie urged her back onto the pillows. She leaned in over her and kissed her again several times. Peggy shifted her over, and she came to lie with Peggy, side by side. They drew one another near and continued kissing at once.

            Angie moved at some point to kiss Peggy's neck and her shoulder then leaned down to kiss Peggy's breast. She took one of Peggy's nipples between her lips for the a moment. This caused Peggy to cry out at once, and Angie came back to her lips to kiss her again, gauging her response, as she felt and searched for what Peggy liked. She returned to her breasts again and again, until Peggy felt almost drugged by it all. Angie must have held a more subtle and nuanced view of Peggy's response than her own, for Peggy felt that she merely enjoyed every single thing Angie did as she sorted her way through Peggy's reactions. She could not imagine that Angie could do anything that she would not like. Her body seemed to spring forth desire enough to meet anything that came to her.

            She took more consideration for keeping track of how her hands on Angie's body were being felt. Angie seemed a bit more timid in a way. She liked a slow, steady feel in Peggy's touch. She would almost flinch or jump at a sudden or quickly increased sensation, and it seemed to throw her for a bit. Peggy caught on quickly and ran her hands over Angie, giving a strong indication of where was about to go, almost taunting her way, she thought, across her body. An anticipated touch seemed to draw Angie closer to Peggy and steady her to receive more pleasure. Peggy leaned down, eventually, having made her way slowly and haltingly, that she might kiss Angie's breasts. Angie seemed almost to lose her ability to move when she did. She held onto Peggy hard and seemed barely able to keep breathing. When Peggy she came up to kiss her open lips, she felt how nearly faint with the feel of it all Angie she had become.

            They kissed deeply several times, and Angie seemed to find herself again after a moment. She slid her hand up between Peggy legs. Peggy gave an involuntary groan right at once that made her become slightly self-conscious. The kiss that followed the sound cleared the feeling away, as Angie kissed her deeply and sort of pressed into her harder, showing she had liked to hear it. Peggy felt astonished then not to be embarrassed by how wet Angie had found her, as she gently shifted and pressed and worked her way closer to touch Peggy, a great deal more intimately than she had ever been touched by anyone else before. It felt like a secret that spilled out between them. And like all the others before, Peggy felt a remarkable absence of her own shame in the sharing. How could she be, she thought, when Angie was the one there, willingly receiving her truth?

            Peggy grew almost still inside for a moment, as she felt Angie's touch most vividly. She shifted her hips slightly with the motion of Angie's hand, as they set up the first gentlest rhythm together between them. As her mind opened out again, she felt very aware of Angie there beside her in the bed. She touched her, felt the soft curves of her body, and soon put her hand in the small of her back and drew her in close, so that she might find a place to put her hand in between Angie's legs, as well.

            Angie arched into her and gave the slightest sound like a faint cry, as she did. Peggy had to be careful, she realized rather suddenly, of her nails against Angie's skin, though she had not hurt her yet. This grew so distracting for a moment, that Peggy shifted up a bit onto her elbow. She felt almost an urgency of desire that made her tighten her jaw. She pressed Angie's shoulder gently.

            "Turn over for me, love," she said softly. Angie seemed compelled by the urge held in the tone of her voice, and Peggy saw her swallow hard as she did what she asked. She had to let go her touch on Peg to do it. Peggy reached to stroke her thighs as she opened her legs. Then Peggy reached to feel her for the first time. Peggy found her so remarkably wet and warm that the softness of her body felt a thing almost infinite. Peggy grew so overwhelmed that her mind practically winked out for a moment.

            She touched Angie carefully, running her fingers over her. She had to take care not to harm her still with her nails. Angie was very quiet, and Peggy looked up at her. Angie smiled a bit.

            "You're not gonna' get too far with those," Angie teased. Her voice was heavy and had a quality to it that was like velvet. The desire in Peggy's body was so strong, she had to will herself hard to shift herself before she could speak.

            "I think you rather underestimate my ingenuity," Peggy said. She came up slightly off of the bed. She ran her nails down Angie's sides and over the outside of her thighs, as she moved down and leaned in, so she that she might bring her mouth in between her legs.

            Angie tensed, and Peggy felt it indicated a sort of panic response, though she did not say anything or make any sound. Her hand had come to Peggy's shoulder and grasped it, as if to steady herself. Peggy leaned back onto her arms and looked up at Angie's face.

            "I'm sorry," Peggy said softly. "I should have asked first. Is this all right?" Angie's look did show she was in a bit of a panic. Her breath came heavily. There was more desire than fear driving it still, Peggy could see. She scrutinized Angie's expression to try and sort it all out.

            "I want you to, I just don't want you to do anything that you –" She never got any further, because after the first sentence came out of her mouth, Peggy went right back and followed through on her intent. She felt Angie's hands holding her shoulders more gently now. Her body shifted and pressed harder into the bed.

            Peggy let her hands run over Angie's stomach as she touched her lips and tongue to her at first. Eventually, she reached up to place her hands over Angie's breasts. She kept her touch on Angie's body very gentle to begin, as if trying to coax Angie's body to open to receive pleasure.

            With her hands, she moved Angie's hips to get her to shift them and find a rhythm that went along with her own. Angie was so quiet that Peggy found herself in absolute concentration, focused on what was conveyed by the movement of Angie's body. She urged her onwards until her pleasure built to such a pitch that Angie's body began to tremble.

            Angie broke from this suddenly, as if releasing herself from a trance, and leaned forward to drag Peggy back over top of her. She pulled her right up into a kiss so deep, it seemed as if she had been dying of want and waiting to kiss Peggy this whole time. And Peggy shifted her weight up and sank down a bit into Angie. Her thigh came between Angie's legs, and at the slightest feel of Angie's hips tipping up towards her, Peggy pressed her thigh into her. She kissed her as she did this again and again finding Angie incredibly responsive to the movement of her thigh on her body.

            Angie moaned now. Peggy heard her voice as it sounded in a moment unmitigated pleasure this the first time. She nearly shivered. Angie pulled at Peggy's waist to draw Peggy into her as she moved. Peggy pressed her thigh hard against her body. She felt her own back arch involuntarily, as Angie bent her knee and her own leg pressed up into Peggy's body.

            Peggy found it more difficult to keep up a steady movement. She felt a groan escape her chest, and her body gave a profound shake. She would have been surprised by her own response if she'd had room in her mind for any actual thoughts. She seemed able only to see and feel what was happening in this moment.

            Angie got caught up in Peggy's response. She reached down between them to touch Peggy again, and Peggy felt her own response prove too dramatic to keep on with what they were doing. Angie practically tipped Peggy over, and she more or less spilled onto the bed and found Angie crawling over her without intending any of it.

            Angie kissed her again, almost hard, as she put her hand back between Peggy's legs. Peggy grew completely lost in the sensations for a moment. She felt then that Angie touched her inside. Some kind of doubt or fear floated up in Peggy's mind. It tried to break through, and she felt entirely disoriented for a moment. Everything was all right, she tried to realize, as if soothing herself internally. Some communication of her anxiety or distractedness must have come through to Angie, because Peggy found Angie to be suddenly kissing her and no longer touching her inside. She'd grown somewhat gentler, Peggy found, and she felt sure she would not do this again unless Peggy said something to ask for it. Peggy felt almost embarrassed for a moment, as Angie kissed now her throat. She had found herself unable to decide what she wanted, quite suddenly, in the midst of all this. The feeling had taken her quite off her guard.

            Any unsettled feeling was hard to sustain, however, as Angie seemed to take it in stride without being remotely deterred. She'd simply moved away from something she thought Peggy did not want and lost none of her focus or her easiness. And the feel of her hand was on Peggy's body still. She pressed hard. Her fingers still ran smoothly as though upon silk. It felt still that Angie touched the heart of her, like she touched the very core of her desire and set it racing. For Peggy to try to think would almost drive her mad in such a state as this.

            Peggy could not lay back. She could not relent to this entirely. She was propped up on her hands with her head held forward. Her knees were bent and her legs pressed together. She could not even feel self-conscious of the cries that she knew she gave now. She felt a rush of her fear, the uncanny fear of death that had come upon her the first night when they kissed. Her body quaked now, and it felt almost like weeping. Her head fell back and her body trembled. Angie hooked her free arm around Peggy's back to brace her. Peggy could not even feel where Angie's mouth moved now, as it passed over her throat and breasts. All of it had become one sensation. A shudder built inside her until she felt she could be shaken apart. When she found herself in the midst of it, she forgot what it was even to ever once have been afraid.

            As Peggy regained her ability to think somewhat, she felt Angie sway with her, as she worked her through the last shudders of pleasure that had caught her up and carried her away, even beyond her own will. Peggy had leaned forward again, and Angie kissed her. Her mouth felt vulnerable, more naked somehow than it had been up until this point. She heard herself moan very slightly at the feel of Angie's tongue upon her own. Peggy wrapped her arms around Angie, as her body finally let go its tension. When it relaxed, she felt as if it had been ages.

            Angie sort of fell into Peggy, as Peggy fell down into the bed. They lay grasping at one another, as they both caught their breath. Peggy turned to look at Angie, who grinned. Peggy had a thought to wonder if she should climb over her again, but Angie seemed spent. So Peggy just breathed and brought herself back somewhat to the plain old, regular world again as much as she could manage it.

            After some minutes, Peggy heard Angie's stomach growl quite audibly. She turned and looked down at her stomach. They both laughed softly. After a moment, Angie clambered out of bed and made her way softly into the kitchen. She threw together ham sandwiches with butter piled on two plates. She dragged a bottle of milk and a couple cups all to the bed.

            Peggy sat up, propping herself on the pillows. Her body felt shakier and more spent than when she had done even the most extreme forms of exercise. Angie put everything on the end table and climbed into bed. She leaned in and kissed Peggy, and it went on until Peggy thought they might actually start up again. She felt relieved in a small way when Angie leaned back, however, as she was really quite focused and could not be readily distracted from food. Angie grabbed the plate of sandwiches. She divided everything up between the two of them.

            They ate in silence. The distance they gained from the immediacy of their love making and the felt sense of nourishment the food provided brought their exhaustion down on both of them like a heavy wave. They both sat nearly splayed on the bed and chewed silently. Angie gave up on her bread crusts, to Peggy's groggy astonishment, and put her plate on the side table. She crawled in under the covers.

            Peggy finished her own sandwich. She decided then to be a hero and dragged herself up to put the bottle of milk back in the fridge. She came back, crawled in, and practically fell onto her face. She thought Angie was already close to being asleep. She felt Angie's hand fall over onto the mattress with a thud that was more of a puff and touch Peggy near the waist. Peggy worked her hand around to take Angie's hand in her own. She fell asleep before she could move again or have another thought.


	6. Margaret Carter's Body Is Her Own

            That next morning, to Peggy's surprise, Angie woke up while she was still finishing her morning exercise routine. Peggy was subject to her own hard impressed schedule and woke promptly at 5a.m.   To her surprise, she did not feel exhausted when she awoke. Perhaps Angie felt some kind of unusual energy, as well. It usually took the smell of breakfast cooking to get her to clamber out of bed and into a robe before she missed anything so important as food. Today, Angie sat up, her hair askew, and eyed Peggy in her white shirt and black pants and boots.  

            "Woah. It got super military in here," Angie said.

            "Nonsense," Peggy said, as she stretched her shoulders and then twisted her back. "I haven't even done any shooting yet today." She dropped to a final round of push-ups before she finished.

            "Jesus, Peg," Angie said watching her. "This explains some things."

            "Don't watch if you're going to distract me," Peggy said through her repetitions. She was joking, and Angie knew it.

            "Yes, ma'am, Agent Carter, ma'am," Angie said. She jumped out of bed and went into the bathroom. Peggy finished what she was doing and stretched for a while, letting her body cool down.

            "Is the regiment over?" Angie's voice came from the bathroom.

            "It is," Peggy said. The door popped open, and Angie stuck her head around the edge.

            "Mind if I put Agent Carter to duties of a more domestic nature?" she asked.

            "What would those be?" Peggy said attempting a mock seriousness that came out light anyway.

            "I need someone to keep me safe in the shower," Angie said.

            "Sounds a bit more dangerous than 'domestic' would imply," Peggy said as she came. Angie opened the door only enough to let her squeeze in and closed it behind her, as if keeping someone out.

            "I am quite disgusting," Peggy said, as she glanced down at the sweat on her shirt. Angie didn't say anything. She pulled the shirt out from where it was tucked in and undid the belt after a small struggle of figuring out how it worked.

            "This 's a tricky little bastard," she said.

            "It's military issue," Peggy said. Angie's lips were on Peggy's before the last word really left her mouth, and she forgot what she'd been talking about at once. The night before came back to her. Her body was still racing from the exercise, and all the memories felt even more vivid in her body than in her mind.

            Angie was kissing her and leaning slightly into her, and Peggy realized then more of the shape of Angie's mood. She seemed a bit vulnerable, Peggy thought, as if worried or lonely. Peggy wasn't sure what the feeling was exactly, but she held Angie close and kissed her.

            While her urge was to take up her usual routine and scrub herself clean efficiently, almost as a finish to her workout, Peggy slowed down today. She washed some of Angie's body with a sort of reverence. Angie kissed her shoulder, reminding Peggy of that first night when she kissed her scars. And Peggy turned and kissed her neck now in return.

            Angie stood back, and Peggy could see now clearly in her face that Angie felt overwhelmed by something. It always felt a slight shock to Peggy to see Angie grow severe, as it was so out of character. She touched Angie's face, and her voice came a bit softly as she spoke to her.

            "What is it?" she said. Angie's usual demeanor came out for just a moment as she gave a sort of easy smile. But it faded quickly into the look on her face. Peggy noticed the lines beside her eyes that she'd never been able to see before.

            "It's nothing, Peg. Just memories, I guess," Angie said. She gave her usual shrug, and Peggy found it almost funny to see her shoulders shift in this characteristic way, covered now only in water.

            "Memories of what?" Peggy asked. Angie looked up at her a moment, though her eyes were distracted and far off. They seemed somewhat dim. Peg could see she was deciding whether or not she ought to say what she was thinking. Angie gave a slight sort of grimace along with another seemingly casual shrug.

            "It's just, you don't look at me any different when I am naked," she said. She looked Peggy in the eyes as she said this, and seeing quickly that Peggy didn't get her meaning, she continued on. "You still look at me like I'm a full person."

            "What else should you be?" Peggy said, touching her shoulder and feeling somewhat distressed by the turn of this conversation. Angie's eyebrow came up, and she gave a sort of huff of laughter that lacked any real energy.

            "I don't know," she said. "Whatever men see once they get past the clothing."

            Peggy realized only now what she must be remembering and comparing with their experiences together. She drew Angie close, as she ran her hands over her shoulders. She kissed Angie's cheek and the side of her neck again. Even when things grew serious, there was a sort of easiness between them.

            "Do you want to tell me about it?" Peggy asked mildly, her voice soft and spoken against Angie's skin. Angie did not answer, and when they stood back from one another to see, Peggy saw her attempt a sort of laugh that would not quite form. She looked tired and very serious. She was undecided Peggy could see. Angie's uncharacteristic seriousness broke quite suddenly.

            "How much time ya' got?" Angie asked with a sideways sort of smile.

            "All the time in the world," Peggy said.

            Angie did not tell Peggy the story that morning. They spent a long time in the shower, distracted by one another and some very slow, quiet kissing. Angie rushed through getting dressed, so she could run out to class. Peggy kissed her in the bedroom doorway before she went out and watched her go. She finished getting dressed herself and put on her make-up, then she stood up to make the bed. She stood staring at it for a moment. All the bedding looked as if someone had been wrestling in it. Peggy felt a tiny bit abashed, just standing there alone. She stripped everything and remade the bed. She saw the little plate lying on the table on Angie's side with the stale bread crusts on it and gathered all the used dishes and took them to the kitchen and washed them.

            She had not been decided on what she planned to do that day as habit carried her through these errands. By the time she was finished, however, she put on her hat and gathered her bag and walked out of the house with purpose. Somehow, as much as she did when she went on covert ops with a persona, she felt invisible as she walked down the sidewalks of New York.

            Peggy halted and practically did an about-face only about twenty feet from the front of the nail parlor. She had forgotten to make up a lie to tell Mrs. Shankman about why she needed her nails taken down. Peggy stepped into a nearby café and ordered a cup of tea. She came up with a lie easily, but she needed a moment to get her bearings on the matter. She took out a small notebook and a pencil.

            When Peggy had joined the secret service, she realized she would have to lie frequently not just on missions but in her personal life. She sat down in her dorm and wrote out a chart for herself of what lies she would and would not tell, so that she could maintain a core of integrity. She did not like how some of the agents seemed always to be playing angles, as if they had forgotten who they were in the shifting world they inhabited for work. She wanted to remember who she was, exactly what was true and what was a lie. She needed some framework for orchestrating such an elaborate life.

            Peggy determined then to lie whenever someone's physical well-being was at stake, when it would direct them away from potential harm. As often as possible, she would stay near the truth. In her intimate relationships, like with her parents, she would simply make it clear when she was withholding information. She would not lie, however, when merely someone's emotional or psychological well-being was at stake. Not if they needed the information she withheld to make their own decisions. Peggy did not know what to think about the lie she wanted to tell now.

            She sat thinking and drinking her tea. She felt herself swiftly caught up in what her father would have called "the endlessly vast robes of Lady Truth", which was his way of describing the near-sighted and lost sense you could feel when you made too much of an ethical situation. Peggy tried to push her way clear. What would her mother say? she wondered. "Your truth is your own," which she used to repeat on occasion to Peggy. She had meant it as an interpersonal code of ethics. Peggy kept a journal all through her childhood. She left it out on her side table, and she knew for absolute certain neither of her parents ever once picked it up to see what was inside.

            Peggy had a new ethical landscape to navigate now. There no doubt could be harm, likely emotional and psychological, to herself and Angie if she did not keep their love affair quite private. And there was really no harm in telling someone like Mrs. Shankman a lie to keep them safe. Still, it felt uncomfortable to Peggy. For the first time, she felt a resentment about this unnecessary demand for secrecy. Peggy felt, most profoundly, that she was not doing anything wrong. And plenty of people who were doing wrong paraded it all over the public. Well, mostly men, she realized. Women were usually pretty secretive about their sexual escapades. She gave a huff of laughter to herself as she sipped her tea and tried out the phrase "sexual escapade" to define her relationship with Angie. She thought of it as a joke.

            She could just start going to someone else, to another parlor, she realized, and avoid the lie. Peggy decided promptly at that point and stood and took up her bag. She did not want to take her business anyplace else just to avoid her own discomfort at telling a lie that would not harm anyone. She went over to the parlor and told Mrs. Shankman that she was taking up ceramics again and needed her nails short. That way, she was able to give more specific instructions, while Mrs. Shankman focused on maintaining the perfection she felt she had obtained with Peggy's nails with a new aesthetic. She took to it like a challenge and focused on exerting her full mastery in her craft. She seemed very happy with the result and even happier with Peggy's pleased response.

            Peggy came home and read for most of the day. When she felt she had read for so long that her mind had drifted far away from the reality of the day, she stopped. She made herself some lunch and wrote a few letters. She did not feel entirely responsible or ambitious that day.

A bit later, Peggy ran herself a bath. She lowered herself into the enormous brass tub after it had filled. She lay back completely lost in the divine glory of a hot bath for several minutes. When she opened her eyes slowly, Peggy noticed the bright red of her nails against the edge of the tub, as they showed vividly through the steam.   She took a good long, look a them, getting used to the idea of having let go of the long nails that had more or less been a trophy that proved the war had really ended.  

            They were a meager token, she thought. She didn't need them anymore. As she washed herself, lazily, more for the enjoyment of it than anything else, she swore she could still feel the experience of the night before in her body, like an echo or an imprint still set into her. She pressed her low stomach and felt it there still for certain. She heard herself let out a long, slow breath, as she considered more directly than she had so far the happenings of the night before. Her chest gave a sort of thrill that could not decide whether it were eagerness or anxiety when she considered that Angie would be coming home soon. She actually sat up quickly and turned to see the clock on the shelf by the sink. She had an hour or more yet before Angie came home. She sat back sort of smiled at her own self. She shook her head mildly.

            She swallowed thinking of the idea of touching Angie again. She felt a tad abashed that Angie would see her nails. It would be fine when she got there, Peggy thought. It felt awkward to consider these things alone. She made a note to herself that she should ask, as she had given Angie a start in bed last night when she went to put her mouth on her with no warning at all. Peggy laughed, involuntarily, at herself for that, remembering. She shook her head again. Who knew? she thought.

            Peggy remembered then her own moment of anxiety in bed with Angie the night before. She felt her own brows tighten, as she tried to recall the moment fully. Angie touched her inside, and Peggy grew distracted and felt quite thrown for a moment. She'd grown terribly uncertain, which felt strange considering everything else that happened during their encounter. She swallowed hard and felt her expression shift to one of sadness and anxiety, as her mind drew forward an explanation as to why.

            Peggy knew for certain thinking back now that in that moment she had been overcome by an anxiety about evidence – the evidence that would exist if Angie touched her inside that she had been to bed with someone. She would not be able to hide this from a man in the future. The idea absolutely astonished Peggy, who sat somewhat stunned in the steaming tub. She felt that her was jaw tensing almost reflexively.

            Peggy's thoughts wandered, trying to garner some sense and meaning to orient her in all of this. She felt angry, now that she realized why she had felt confused about what she wanted. She sat back and closed her eyes again. How long had it been since Peggy had first declared that her body was entirely her own?

            She remembered vividly a foggy day when she sat with her father on the porch of the house where her parents lived at that time on the outskirts of London. She had told her parents she planned to join the secret service. They were quiet and severe. Finally, as they sat in a sort of sunroom at the back of the house alone hours later, Peggy's father smoked a pipe and stared out into the barely visible world. After a while, he turned to look at Peggy. He gently tried to dissuade Peggy, and she grew only more adamant, as no doubt he had anticipated. He had been involved in the service during WWI. Peggy remembered most distinctly the one thing he said that had given her pause.

            "The way you survive a war is to make sure you’re a brain and not a body," he told her. That was how he had survived the last war. Peggy considered this, as they sat there in room surrounding on three sides by fog. He was right she knew. She would be both, not a grunt easily pawned as canon fodder in some ill-fated scheme, but she already knew she was much more likely to die in the war this way.

            "This is my right," Peggy had said. He did not disagree. He looked at her with the deepest concern. Peggy felt vividly for a moment what it must mean for her parents to have their only daughter declare that she would disappear on dangerous missions for the duration of the war. His fear over the potential grief they faced was an absolute one over which no one held full mastery. He swallowed.

            "Yes, Peg," he said. "And I'm sure you'll do the service proud. This is just how I stayed alive, by being more valuable behind the scenes. And I did great things for the war effort. Are you sure you won't reconsider? It would be a great loss for us all if you were to die." He meant not only himself and her mother but also the English service itself. She felt her eyes tear up with pride and gratitude to him for saying this and believing it.

            "I am sure that this is how I can serve the war effort best," Peggy said. She actually wished in that moment that she were not so sure. She considered letting her parents' wishes override her own. She had no capacity to do this, however, as it was a completely alien discipline in her life so far.

            Her father sat beside her and smoked his pipe in silence. And Peggy remembered how both her parents drew close with her during that stay, putting aside their work, she had no doubt. They were taking her in, she felt, in case this was them seeing her for the last time.

            It would be a full year, she remembered, before a change came in the letters Peggy sent home. For that first long stretch of months, they were filled with proud reports and a confidence that she would make it home. She had been a part of eight high-level missions, and she had gone on two as a solitary operative. Not a single thing had gone wrong.

            Then, finally, something did. Peggy was assigned to steal a number of intelligence documents from a German officer. She used another officer, actually of higher rank, to get into the encampment where they were staying. She'd chloroformed him after spiking his tea with a sedative. She made her way through the halls easily and opened the door to the officer's room. He was to be out, called away on some false message.

            She found him standing with his coat off when she opened the door to his room. There was a single moment of silence that passed between them. Somehow they recognized one another for what they each were – extremely dangerous. They sprang at once into a fight. Peggy never could remember the exact details of what happened. She remembered he grabbed his luger first, and she thought his hand broke when she kicked it away. He grabbed his belt off the table and yanked his dagger free from its scabbard. The next part was all a blur. Peggy ended up with the belt. They struggled at a distance then in close. Then Peggy had the knife in her hand, and she saw a flash of red that would never leave her mind, as the officer fell to his knees. He fell towards the bed, and the blood pumping out of his neck stained the white sheets. He slipped to the floor and lay dead at her feet within moments.

            Peggy stood only a moment before she heard men coming down the hall. They had made some noise as they fought and as he fell. She stared down at the dead officer's luger a moment. Her mind just registered that if a shot fired, the room would be flooded with men. Peggy, no doubt, would be dead. She stepped to the side of the door without another thought.

            When the two men came in, she pulled the barrel of the first one's rifle forward and cut his throat. The second man drew a breath to yell, but Peggy had already gotten her arm around and slashed his throat, as well. They tumbled, a pile of dead men now in the small room. She dragged them in and shut the door and stood a moment.

            There weren't supposed to be any kills. Peggy stood breathing for how long she could never tell afterwards. It might have been moments or an hour. The room felt filled with blood to her. Her mind flashed through what she could reasonably deduce about her situation now. She found the intelligence in a briefcase and packed it away into a small, side bag. There were three rifles and a pistol in the room. Peggy looked at the bloody dagger in her hand. It had more weight than the common service daggers in the belts of the two lower ranking men. Her mind ran through the maps and schedules she had been shown before she left. There was no time, and there was too much blood on her now to exit in any manner that would allow her to be seen, including the one she had planned. She would have to take the straightest way out. Her mind ticked through, sorting out the best course from what she knew of the encampment.

            Six men, she calculated: six solitary, stationary guards stood between her and the thin scattering of woods that led to a road that could take her to meet the truck that planned to take her out when her mission was through. They would wait, she knew, until they had no other choice than go. They would wait until morning if they had to and leave only reluctantly then. She felt no doubt they would risk their lives for hers. If she could get to the truck she could survive this night. Peggy's mind flicked over the impossibility of killing six men with rifles quietly and without any of them firing a shot. If she took up a rifle herself, she would be swarmed with men. She feared most that she might be injured in the firefight that followed and captured to awaken later still alive. And that would a fate far worse than dying. With the hand holding the dagger, she used the fingertip of her middle finger, she could remember quite distinctly, to feel between two ribs in her chest. She postured a single thought in the center of mind for a moment. If a shot fired, she would plunge the dagger into her own heart. She held the precise place in her mind, so she would not lose it. With that final piece resolved, Peggy made her way out of the room.

            She knew if for a miracle as she passed through each step of her brutal journey even as she made it. One man after another fell. Some she snuck up on. Others, she could not get close to. She would wipe both sides of the dagger on her dress to dry it first, so it would fly straight when she threw.

            She felt the horrifying sharpness of fear assault her body, strangely enough, for the first time as she piled into the back of the truck. Peggy sat with her knees drawn up, silent during the ride. She expected them to be pursued, but they were not. When she clambered out into their base camp, she looked about and found it all rather surreal, unlike what it had seemed only hours before when she left the place. Somehow, the mission felt still the real world. This was something else entirely. Something Peggy felt convinced was not quite real.

            She turned in the intelligence she had gathered and stood at ready for a debrief. Her commanding officers were seated around a hardwood, round table. They rifled through the papers and asked her questions. She remembered her own voice, clear and unwavering as it came out.

            "There was collateral damage," she said. "All on their side."

            "How many?" one asked. Peggy had to think.

            "Nine," she said. There were more questions, and she tried to answer them. She must have made sense, because the questioning never escalated.

            "Are you injured Agent Carter?" a man named Lieutenant Pratt finally asked her. She remembered that he almost reached for her arm and stopped himself. Peggy looked down to realize he had moved to her left side, where there was blood smeared on the bright blue of her dress. He worried she was injured and too stunned to feel it.

            "Oh, no," she said. "I am entirely uninjured." The phrase felt strange. She turned back and listened to the murmurs of approval and the characteristic, heavy, almost sadistic joy of the officers over the intelligence they received. They congratulated her quite heartily on a job well done. Several of them came to shake her hand. Peggy was dismissed to return for a full debriefing in the morning. She remembered one of them joking as she left that she should sleep in and the others laughing, a nod to the excellence and severity of the mission she had just successfully achieved.

            They had commandeered an old hotel for their base camp. Peggy and another female agent, Lydia Sommersby, shared a room in the old hotel. Peggy felt stiff as she walked up the stairs to their room. She found Lydia out and shut the door behind herself. She stood for she could not say how long, frozen and silent, in the center of that small room that felt entirely unfamiliar now.

            She sort of came to then. She went and got her pistol, checked it, and carried it at her side as she went into the bathroom to set a bath running. She then dug out a bottle of terrible whiskey she'd been hoarding and poured herself a drink. She carried a wooden desk chair into the bathroom and put the pistol and drink both on it right beside the tub. She pulled off her dress. The imprint of the knife blade was repeated several times in a pattern on her dress, a garish vision that might have been strangely beautiful if not for what it signified. Peggy threw the dress down. She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked like a stranger to herself, and she stepped closer and stared. The image became more familiar, and she began to decipher how pale she looked and how blank her face was. She looked like a ghost, like she had died somehow. It gave her a bit of a fright, which actually made her feel more herself, as if jarred back into reality by her own concern. She felt more her body now. In the tub, she watched her hands tremble violently until the same trembling went all through her body. She finally grew still, and she sat holding her knees in the water. Lydia found her still in the tub a long time later with the water gone mostly cold. She came right in and sat down on the chair, taking up the pistol and holding it in her lap, to ask Peggy about her mission. Rumors were already starting to spread. Soon she more or less dragged Peggy out and got her into a towel and put her to bed with another, better drink she had brought.

            In the morning, they gave her the dagger. She had left it, apparently, in the back of the truck. Her story had been confirmed. And Agent Carter's status had been elevated after that night among her peers to a level that took her a long time to comprehend fully. She kept that knife for years afterwards before gifting it to a young agent called Shorty, whom Peggy alone called by her real name, Christina. Within six months, Shorty was known instead as The Pocket-Sized Dragon. She was an excellent agent. Peggy eventually heard through a chain of colleagues that she had been killed in action near D-Day. Peggy had stuffed the blue dress with its blood stains down into a barrel of rubbish the next day.  

            It was a simple, human error that had wrecked her mission. The phone number to be used to call in the false request to speak to her target officer was written poorly and misread. The intelligence had been good, and the number would have worked otherwise. That had meant the missing, pivotal detail in her plan.

            Peggy became far more assertive in her missions planning after that before she would go out. She went over everything herself and pushed for changes and modifications that she thought best. Another agent commented on this, impressed she could feel.

            "I just want to insure my parents get there whole daughter back and not just the bits," she said. "I'm willing to die for Mother England, but not if it's to be avoided."

            Peggy had recognized even at the time an immediate difference in the tone of her letters home. Peggy had chosen to claim her right to place her own body in the line of danger to serve the war effort. Her parents knew, then, what she didn't, or perhaps felt it more fully. She no longer felt certain she was ever coming home.

            Peggy sat now in a still steaming bathtub of rare, fine make on the other side of war. She looked at her hands, and they were not trembling. They were steady and well-manicured, the nails shortened so she could better make love to the woman she wanted. She swallowed, as she realized, that unconsciously she had always felt moored to the idea of having a single lover. She had accepted in some way that she would be and, perhaps, should be judged as less if she took any lovers before she found a mate for life. She felt ashamed at the idea of being found out.

            Peggy tried to sort that out, how that had happened exactly. Apparently she had planned to give her one life and take the lives of dozens of men, and by way of indirect action hundreds if not thousands at this point, and yet felt entitled only to a single lover in her lifetime, however long or short it might prove. She accepted the idea that a man whose sexual past she would never question might have right to claim primacy in her own. The paradoxes stunned her into a silence that made her breath come faintly.

            She had quite determined to reestablish her claim on her own body by the time she came out the tub. She stood drying herself in her room. Any lover who wanted her in the future would be one who also considered her body her own. If she was to be valued as less, she would rather not be valued by that particular person at all.

            She did little to occupy herself again before Angie came home. She had made a cup of tea and sat at the table just thinking. Angie came home before her first cup of tea was finished. Angie poured herself a cup from the kettle and sat down. She seemed very peaceful to Peggy in some way. The chatted only briefly, then Angie's eyes trailed over Peggy, catching her mood. Peggy indeed felt quite rigid, although somehow she also was not quite properly sitting straight.  

            "You all right English?" Angie said.

            "Yes, quite," Peggy said. Angie looked her over in silence. In a few moments, Peggy realized she could see a deep anxiety hidden under the calm surface of Angie's expression.

            "Truly," Peggy said and touched her arm. Angie accepted that but did not look convinced.

            "What did you do today?" Angie asked.

            "Um, I got my nails taken down," Peggy said. Angie's look flashed to her hand on the table. To Peggy's surprise, Angie shrank down in her chair, as she grinned and blushed absolutely all over. Peggy watched in astonishment and felt herself grin in response. Up until that point in their lives, Peggy did not even know that Angie could be made to blush.

            "Not for me, you didn't," Angie said through her deeply embarrassed grin as she hid her eyes partly with her hand.

            "Yes, I did," Peggy said. A smile was on her lips, but even her joking tone still came a little heavy and serious.

            "You sure you're all right, Peg?" Angie asked. She reached over and took her arm again. She looked still concerned though less worried now.

            "Um, yes," Peggy said. She sat up straighter and tried to shake some of the stiffness from her voice. Angie studied her face a moment and worked her mouth as if looking for something to say.

            "Okay," Angie said lightly. She seemed to decide she should not press Peggy too hard. Peggy thought for a moment. Angie took a drink of her tea.

            "Angie, about last night," Peggy said.

            "Yeah?" Angie said. Her eyebrows went up and her face went sort of blank in preparation, no doubt, for whatever she was about to hear.

            "Would you touch me inside next time?" Peggy said. Her voice came out a bit heavy, though she was glad it did not falter. She felt her own jaw flicker with tension as she waited for a response, and she had no idea what all showed in her face. Angie's expression had shifted, as she clearly felt astonished to hear Peggy say this aloud, and it seemed had felt her own desire provoked quite unexpectedly. She seemed to think deeply, trying to judge what was underneath this request.

            "Yes, I will," Angie said definitively. After a few moments, Angie moved her chair over. She put her elbow on the table and leaned in and kissed Peg. "You seem _so_ serious about something as fun as that," she said smiling, as she tried to lighten the mood. She took Peggy's hand and held it.

            "Forgive me," Peggy said. "I'm afraid I was having some rather existential thoughts in the bath." She meant it partly as a joke aimed at herself.

            "Did you drink?" Angie asked.

            "No," Peggy said surprised.

            "That's your problem. You gotta' drink if you want to engage in some philosophical quandary while you're all wet and naked. Sets you up for problems, otherwise. Clothes on the outside or wine on the inside." Angie said as if this were both common knowledge and absolute fact. She went immediately to the cupboard and started to get them out a bottle of wine.

            "Is that right?" Peggy said. Her amusement actually seemed to be drawing her out of her severe reverie. Angie leaned against the counter as she turned the corkscrew into the wine's cork.

            "Mm-hm," Angie said. "Plato said that. Or maybe it was Socrates. I don't know, whichever of them guys I read once." Peggy laughed fully, as Angie popped open the wine. She poured them glasses.

            Angie got Peggy to come sit on the couch. They piled on with one at each end, so they could lean against the arms and face each another. They chatted first about Angie's class. She told Peggy about a handful of shows she was planning to audition for in the coming weeks. She seemed less stiff when she described them, which Peggy knew meant she felt less anxious or self-conscious about wanting to get those roles. Peggy thought about how Angie had been describing things. It did seem that Angie felt less and less like she was trying for something that did not appropriately belong to her, as if there were people who were _meant_ to be actors, and she was not one. Peggy felt a certainty that now she would be much more likely to act well and a land a role. She felt proud herself of all the progress Angie was making and said so. She thought for a moment she would get to see Angie blush a second time in one day, as she seemed sink down into the couch she grew so abashed.

            "You talk so sweet to me, Peg, I feel like a different person," Angie said. Peggy laughed softly.

            "You talk sweet to everyone, Ang," Peggy said. "And especially to me. It's not you being different, it's you getting the same as you give." Angie laughed softly at this.

            "Nah'," Angie said. "It's different. You talk to me like I matter. I end up feeling like someone who deserves a better life." The phrase brought out a sharp serious feeling in Peggy's chest.

            "You do the same for me, truly," Peggy said. Angie looked over to see that she was serious and turned away and smiled warmly.

            "I feel like I got out of one life, but just sort of stalled in between for a couple of years there," Angie said. "I knew I'd have to get a break. I'd be married with a batch of kids by now if I did what I was supposed to."

            "Well, you definitely are not doing what you're supposed to now," Peggy joked. Angie did not catch the joke for a moment, then she looked shocked and delighted. She liked an irreverent joke, perhaps especially from Peggy. Peggy sat thinking about Angie's past and the life she chose not to live. She tried to envision it.

            "Would you tell me some more about your younger life?" Peggy said. Angie looked surprised.

            "What part?" Angie said.

            "Well, I should like to know about your lovers honestly, if you don't mind," Peggy said. Angie's smiled faded out a bit. She sat quiet and thoughtful for a moment.

            "You sure you wanna' know that stuff?" Angie said.

            "Yes," Peggy said definitively. "But you should decide whether you want to tell me before we've finished this, and I'll help you stick to it. I don't want to interrogate you when you've been quite comprised by wine and affection." She lifted the wine bottle as she spoke, which was still half filled. Angie laughed in a way that said she thought Peggy's language was funny.

            "No, I'll tell ya', love," she said. "I decided this mornin' I would, if you really wanted to know," Angie said. She got them both more wine as she said this.

            "I do," Peggy said. Angie sat now with her back against the back of the couch and turned to look at Peggy. Angie seemed to want to be a bit closer so she could read Peggy's face for a moment. Peggy let her. She was not entirely certain why she thought Peggy might be disinterested.

"I've had three lovers – three men," Angie said. She kept looking at Peg as if to gauge her response. Peggy sat completely unmoving still leaning into the arm of the couch. She was not quite sure what kind of response she should have felt at this, even though Angie obviously looked for one.

            "Alight," Peggy said casually. "Who were they?" Angie sort of smiled and shook her head in a kind of amazement.

            "Well, the first one, that was when I was seventeen, his name was Alex, but I called him Mr. Mitchell. He was my dad's boss, more or less, where he worked. Dad used to bring him around and have my mom cook to impress him.

            "He was kind of a weird, single guy. Forty, maybe." Peggy did start in response at this, and Angie looked over at her with one eyebrow cocked. "I know," she said with a strange and sardonic, one-sided grin with her lips pressed together.

            "We went on this kind of a holiday with him. I don't know what they all were thinking. He was sort of getting adopted into our family in a way, and I'm not sure what my parents thought they would get out of it. We went out to Coney Island then stayed at this strange little hotel. It was kind of small, like a B&B. Anyways, everybody drank a lot, and my younger sister got sick from the food or the rides. So my older sister was off takin' care of her. My dad was playin' snooker, I think, trying to learn it or somethin'. I don't know where my mom was, maybe with the boys doin' somethin'."

            "Mr. Mitchell , he sort of ushered me off on my own. He got all sweet on me at first, and I thought he just had a lot to drink. I teased him about it all. But after a while, he got real serious. We ended up going his room with him sort of dragging me along by my arm telling me how good of a girl I was." Angie gave a sort of grimace to finish and took a long drink of her wine. She turned and looked a Peggy, and Peggy realized, the story was finished.

            "You cannot be serious," Peggy said. Peggy actually put her hand to her face a moment and closed her eyes. She felt she might get a migraine from rage. Angie was quiet for a while.

            "Yeah," she said. When Peggy looked back at her, she had her lips pursed and her eyebrows raised. She looked almost cynical and yet almost dismissive of the whole story. She took another drink of wine.

            "So what happened after? The next day?" Peggy said with an impatient gesture of her hand.

            "My parents totally figured it out," Angie said. "They were really pissed."

            "As they should have been," Peggy said.

            "They didn't let me leave the house for somethin' like weeks. It was crazy," Angie said.

            "No," Peggy said incredulous. "You are joking. They were not angry with _you_."

            "Oh yeah, they were," Angie said. "My dad yelled at me so long, I thought he was gonna' hit me for a second. He yelled at both my sisters, too, which I still don't get what that was about."

            "Where was this Mr. Mitchell in all this?" Peggy asked. Angie shrugged. 

"Gone, I guess. He didn't really come around anymore, but my dad stayed out late more often. Out to bars or whatever with all the guys from work, I figure with him."  

            "They remained friends?" Peggy asked almost too surprised to be angry for a moment. Angie shrugged. She looked for a long moment at Peggy's as Peggy grew livid. Angie gave a _pssht_ sound, sort of snort and huff of disdain.

            "I wish I'd been that pissed when I was at that age," Angie said shaking her head.

            "You were angry I hope?" Peggy said.

            "I don't know," Angie said.

            "What did you feel?" Peggy asked.

            "Upset, I guess. But I don't know about angry," Angie said.

            "Did you like Mr. Mitchell?" Peggy asked. Angie gave a sort of sarcastic laugh at this.

            "I didn't know. I was seventeen," Angie said.

            "What do you think about it now?" Peggy said.

            "I think he was an alcoholic and a huge creep is what I think now," Angie said.

            "How did you think of the encounter then?" Peggy asked with searching sort of curiosity. Angie seemed to try to think. She didn't have a ready answer. After a while, Peggy saw that lifeless look come into her face. Angie huffed.

            "I just thought it was my fault," Angie said with a shrug. "Like my parents said. I just thought I was slutty."

            "That is utterly absurd," Peggy said.

            "I admit, I wouldn't do that to my daughter in a million years," Angie conceded.  

            "All right," Peggy said after a long moment passed. "And after that start? Seriously, Angie, I hope you recognize that's a miserable experience for a girl that age."

            "I had a lot 'a miserable experiences as a girl that age," Angie said. "It didn't really stand out as significant to me at the time."

            "I was at boarding school, captaining a lacrosse team, going to town dances and picking out which boys _my age_ I wanted to have a turn with before the end of a seemingly short night," Peggy said for a contrast.

            "That does sound superior," Angie said.

            "You should have been doing something of the same," Peggy said. Angie took a deep breath, resituated herself on the couch, and then let it out. She picked up on Peggy's previous question.

            "Then after that was number two – the big one," Angie said. She turned to Peg. "I already said a little bit about him."

            "Yes," Peggy said. "Willy, the one who went away to war."

            "Yeah," Angie said. She seemed a little surprised Peggy remembered, which made Peggy just the tiniest bit annoyed.

            "Was that one more of a romance?" Peggy asked.

            "Yeah, it was," Angie said with a nod. "He was real nice and came around to the house to win my father over. We used to go out to films all the time. He had a really keen interest in films. He loved them. We always had something to talk about."

            "So you liked him?" Peggy said. Angie sort of bit her bottom lip, as she thought.

            "I thought that I did," Angie said.

            "Something happened?" Peggy asked. Angie sighed. Her eyes looked almost pained, and she made somewhere between a shrug and a move that seemed like shaking off the sensation of discomfort. She kind of cocked her head before she spoke.

            "It got weird, Peg," Angie said. "When we were alone. I thought I really wanted that boy. He was real good lookin', in his own way. He treated me nice, you know. He kind a' knew about Mr. Mitchell, and he still wanted me. He would've married me, I'm sure. I really felt excited, you know, when I went with him to that hotel. I thought it was going to be great." They sat silent for a moment. "It wu'dn't great," Angie said in a single, sharp phrase. She looked at Peggy a for a moment, and Peggy knew she could read the question Peggy was thinking of asking. She sort of squinted, trying to decide what she wanted to say. "Like, he put his hand over my mouth at one point when I was going to say somethin'," she said and added after a moment, "I had this bruise where he kind of leaned his elbow into my stomach." She glanced over at Peg's expression to see if that was enough and dropped the rest.

            "You know, what's weird," she said, "Is that I didn't really think of it that way for a while, as anything to be upset about really. I didn't even know I felt bad about it until after I had thought I was pregnant for a while and realized I wasn't. Then I just felt scared of him. I felt like he wasn't who I thought, and what we had wasn't what I thought either. I didn't know how to say what it really was. He wrote me from the army. He would have come back and married me. He wasn't just trying to get me in bed and gonna' toss me aside for someone else. I really thought I was in love that whole time before he left." Peggy reached over and touched Angie's shoulder. That story seemed much worse to Peggy, and Angie seemed more pained by it. They were both stories of betrayal, and this one seemed to have Angie's heart wrapped up in it and not on her own side.

            "All right, one more," Peggy said to urge Angie on with her stories. Angie gave a more animated shrug at that.

            "Oh, him. That one's not as bit of a deal. I had this landlord named Mr. Phelps, Clarence actually. He sort of cornered me, and he was a scary guy. That one didn't go as far, but I think it still counts. It was a one time thing, and I dodged him until I could find a new place after that," Angie said. "He was just one of those guys who does whatever he can get away with. I wasn't really on my guard. I didn't get the risks picking out a place on my own. I think he tried that with single female tenants all the time."

            "For Christ's sake," Peggy said. Angie looked a bit impressed by Peggy's profanity. Peggy put her hand to her temple again for a moment. "So that's it then?" Peggy said and opened her hand.

            "That is it," Angie said with a finishing flourish in her tone. "Three times, and I was cured."

            "There _are_ better men out there," Peggy said. Angie gave a sort of incredulous huff of laughter.

            "I ain't wadin' through," she said in a tone that left no room for argument. "Besides, you could toss someone out a window. You'd have an easier time sortin' through 'em. Maybe you could start a service." They both laughed a bit at that. They sat quite for a moment. Angie went on drinking her wine.

            "I'm glad you told me," Peggy said. She touched Angie's shoulder. Angie smiled and seemed to think for a moment.

            "Me, too," she said, as if realizing it in that moment. She smiled really soft, and Peggy could see it was true. They drank their wine in silence for a while.

            "It's funny, thinking back," Angie said. "I don't think it was ever really up to me to decide what I was gonna' do with men. The world just sort 'a decided I was a slut before I even got a word in."

            "Well, you should tell the world to go fuck itself," Peggy said. She felt a sudden consciousness of her own language trickle into her thoughts. She had not spoken that way except in the depths of war, where all social mores were shattered. This felt somewhat like war to Peggy, some strange and private war against her own friend, and lover now, she remembered to include. She could not help but speak in the manner it warranted. Angie had been slightly stunned by her language, and she sat looking at Peggy. But she liked it, Peggy could see from her slight grin.

            "I think I maybe have," Angie said. She raised her eyebrow and grinned in a sort of delight at her own situation. "Guess I determined to just be a lesbian instead." She laughed at herself at this. The laughed faded out after a minute. She seemed to be thinking. She took a drink of her wine. "You know, some people would say that, God knows, and we'll go straight to hell for what we've been doin'," Angie said in a tone of seriousness.

            "I've been to hell," Peggy said, "And it was quite manmade and full of rape and _not_ sex." Her voice came out hard and left no room for doubt or argument. There were stories about the war she would never tell. She had barely told them to herself or those who witnessed what she had alongside her. Angie looked at her a moment, perhaps feeling the shape of such secrets in Peggy's heart.

            "I'm not sure I used to know there was a real difference," Angie said with a slight shake of her head. Peggy looked hard at her for a moment, feeling the most terrible distress. "I know now," Angie said in response to just her look. "I could never be fooled again. Not even for an instant." They were quiet a moment.

            "I don't think you have anything to be ashamed about, Ang," Peggy said then. Angie smiled just a bit with one side of her mouth and glanced at her. They sat in a sort of profound quiet for a long moment.

            "I been tellin' myself that for a while now," Angie said. "I think it's startin' to sink in." She leaned back and shed her serious demeanor all in an instant. "Then I met this English girl with the finest legs in New York and chased her as hard as I could for months on end." Peggy burst out laughing.

            "I don’t remember any _chase_ ," Peggy said.  

            "I do," Angie said. "You were as closed up as a oyster when I met you, Peg."

            "I was never an oyster," Peggy argued vaguely.

            "Like one," Angie said. "It's called a metaphor, English."

            "Well, I reject your metaphor," Peggy said in an aloof tone. "In the service, they called me a Tasmanian Devil for a little while."

            "What's that? Angie said with a laugh.

            "A creature that goes almost mad it becomes so fierce," Peggy said.

            "Be still my heart," Angie said. She reached to straighten her shirt and move around on a couch a bit. "You got a real gentle side in there aside from that one."

            "You get the best of me," Peggy said in a only somewhat joking tone and tipped her glass towards Angie as she took a drink for emphasis. Angie's eyebrows flicked up in a suggestive way. She took a drink of her wine, quite slowly.

            "Indeed, I do," she said suggestively. "And even I didn’t think it would be _that_ good," she added having turned away from Peggy. She knew Peggy would be embarrassed, and she just avoided looking at her blushing face. Angie put her wine down and leaned far over and kissed Peggy. Peggy put away her own glass and drew Angie up more, so that they could continue kissing. The position was a bit odd and wouldn't hold long.

            "Thanks for chasing me, Ang," Peggy said. Angie smiled but her eyes broke away from Peggy's. "Chased is not the same as seduced," she added. Angie looked positively astonished.

            "You listen to every damn thing I say," Angie said with delight.

            "Every sound you make, actually," Peggy said. They kissed for a long time after that. They had polished off the bottle of wine. Peggy realized it had grown late.

            "Sleep beside me?" Peggy asked Angie mildly.

            "You got it, English," Angie said. Peggy could see she felt flattered by the invitation.

            They sort of tangled themselves up in one another in the bed. It became actually humorous at one point. Angie started arranging them so the most parts of their bodies could touch as possible. They ended up falling asleep with their legs entangled, almost woven through one another's in an strangely comfortable way.

 

            When Peggy awoke at 5 a.m. a strange sort of hesitance came over her that kept her from turning out of the bed instantly. There was a thunderstorm going on outside. Peggy turned to see Angie lying next to her. She moved over and put her arm around Angie, who woke just enough to nestle into her. Peggy lay holding onto her and barely thinking, enjoying the beauty of hearing the storm outside as she lay in the warm and quiet bed. She ended up staying in bed until nearly seven. Peggy complained of a slight headache as they sat down to a late breakfast.

            "You're a lightweight, English," Angie joked in obvious delight.

            "I am most certainly not a lightweight. I am a European woman who spent most of a decade in the service," Peggy said in mock self-defense. She squeezed the bridge of her nose for an instant. "It's all those tedious men you told me about last night. I am still processing it all." Angie found that incredibly funny, Peggy could tell. Peggy went on teasing her. "No, if you ever see me hung over, you'll know. All my friends turn to enemies, and I bark like a sergeant at anyone who makes even the slightest noise. People fear being shot." Angie laughed, clearly recognizing that it was a ruse.

            It was Saturday. They had an entire day ahead of them with no plans. Peggy double checked with Angie.

            "I'm all yours," Angie said.

            "Delightful," Peggy said only slightly wishing she could hide her grin.

            They were both surprised soon after to hear a gentle knock on the front door. Peggy went and found Mr. Jarvis standing on the step. He was carrying a box, and Peggy already found herself concerned about what was inside. He seemed almost coy as he entered, and he barely looked at Angie as he said good morning to her.

            "Enjoying a late breakfast," he said.

            "I been keepin' Peg up at night," Angie said. Her tone was slightly suggestive, and Peggy saw Mr. Jarvis respond to this by looking up at Angie. They just looked at one another for a moment. He gave a sort of pleased and coded smile.

            "I won't bother you for long," he said.

            "That's all right, love. Here, have some tea," Angie said. He sat somewhat awkwardly and accepted a cup.

            "This is for you Miss Carter from Mr. Stark," he said.

            "He tryin' to steal my girl?" Angie asked as she stood leaning into the counter somewhat behind Mr. Jarvis.

            "I'm not steal-able," Peggy said in a stern tone. She saw Mr. Jarvis smile again, though he had not turned to Angie. She wanted to feel annoyed at Angie's jokes, but instead she found herself studying Mr. Jarvis. He seemed to know exactly that they meant, and he responded as if this happened all the time in his life. She glanced at Angie, who raised an eyebrow. She turned away from her at once.

            "To be honest, I don't know what it is," he said bringing her back to the matter of the box. Peggy opened it, and she found a long note and three items inside. One was a new version of the pen camera he had shown her before. The others were a round, heavy ball like a ball-bearing and a fine, lady's watch. Peggy felt worried to touch these before reading the note. She skimmed it through briefly. It seemed the ball could disorient attack dogs, which she thought impossible, although she knew not to question Stark's inventions. And the watch was a new and improved version of his combination lock opener. It did not have to turn the lock to release the tumblers, so it worked instantly and made almost no sound. Peggy felt he was entitled to the boastful tone he took in his letter. He had a long description of how it worked using contradictory magnetic forces, and Peggy had to avoid getting absorbed into the science of it. She looked up at Mr. Jarvis.

            "Spy gear," Peggy said to Mr. Jarvis and Angie both. Then she said to Jarvis sharply, "I don't suppose there's a job attached to this."

            "No, not at all. I suspect he imagines you'll go freelance," Mr. Jarvis said. He sipped his tea.

            "What does that mean?" Peggy asked.

            "I don't know," Mr. Jarvis said with a shrug, "It's just something he said once."

            "Bet you got to track down some real crazy stuff for Mr. Stark," Angie piped up. Jarvis turned to glance at her a moment. He turned back and gave rather an embarrassed sort of grin to Peggy.

            "Yes, well," Jarvis said, "Everyone thinks they're original. Stark hasn't come up with anything I haven't heard a number of times before, honestly. And he hasn't asked for many that I have, as a matter of fact. I suppose there are many types of inventors." He took another drink of his tea.

            Peggy tried not to notice Angie, who was standing behind Jarvis, but she could not avoid looking. Angie was sucking her teeth and grinning with her eyebrows raised and nodding dramatically and pointing at Mr. Jarvis. Peggy cleared her throat awkwardly. Before she could say anything, Mr. Jarvis went on quite as usual.

            "If there's anything the two of you would like, anything particularly special, just let me know. I'm very well connected, as it turns out," Jarvis said. Angie just opened her hand with a look that said, _See_ , so loudly Peggy could not help but grow quite awkward.

            "Yes, thank you, Mr. Jarvis," Peggy said through a voice that cracked. Mr. Jarvis seemed pleased and a little shy and put on his hat and took his briefcase from the desk. He turned to say goodbye to Angie this time.

            "I may just take you up on that, sweetie," Angie said to him. She reached and shook his hand, somewhat gently. Peggy saw Jarvis grow less nervous with her at once. He waved at them both as they went out.

            "I totally called that," Angie said and pointed triumphantly after him as soon as he left.

            "Angie," Peggy said in very shallow admonishment.

            "What?" Angie said and shrugged without remorse. "You gotta' take a man up on an offer like that, Peg. No pressure on you, mind." She waved her hand at Peggy dismissively as she Mr. Jarvis's cup and saucer in the sink. Peggy felt glad Angie was turned and did not see how vividly she blushed at all of this. She sat quiet and thinking for a long moment, as Angie got a glass of water and drank it and looked out at the gardens a moment.

            "Do you suppose he guessed this all along?" Peggy asked Angie.

            "What? Me and you?" Angie said. She seemed to think hard before her eyebrows flicked up a moment. "Man like that probably knows some stuff, sure. Though maybe he just saw potential. You know what I mean?"

            "Yes, I suppose I do," Peggy said.

            Peggy did not particularly plan for them to spend most of their day in bed. But that was more or less how it turned out. They went out for a long walk after Mr. Jarvis left. They gathered some vegetables from the gardens on the house grounds, as the soil had dried enough. They cooked an elaborate lunch together. By three o'clock, however, they were standing kissing in the bedroom. Angie glanced at the bed.

            "Is it too early?" she said with a smile in a sort of playful and tentative tone

            "No," Peggy said. She felt her jaw tighten. "This is going to take a long time." She took Angie's face in her hands and gave her a kiss of sudden, intense passion. Angie almost staggered into her in response. They held onto one another until they both gained their balance. Then they stepped back just a bit, still kissing, and started to remove one another's clothing. It was tricky without being able to see, and eventually they had to let go and really look.

            Peggy felt astonished anew by the sight of Angie's body now in the sunlight. She ran her hand over her skin, marveling at the fact that she got to touch her this way. She felt she was receiving a gift, and she held Angie with a sort of reverence made no less tender by the immense passion she felt building rapidly between them. Angie responded almost dramatically to her touch, closing her eyes and growing heavy, so that when Peggy knelt down to remove her stockings, she put her hand to Peggy's shoulder and swayed.

            Peggy stood, then, and led Angie to sit on the bed. She barely removed her own clothes before leaning in over her. Angie sank into the bed. With a great effort she pulled away from their kissing, so that she could move herself up into the bed fully. Peggy sort of crawled up the bed along with her, staying overtop of her the entire time and making plans.

            She thought to wonder if it was beginning to be too much, but Angie put her hands at Peggy's waist and drew her down. They kissed that way for a long time, as Peggy ran her hands over Angie's face and neck. Peggy spent a long time running her hands over Angie and kissing her body. She moved as slowly as she could. She looked up after kissing her way along the inside of her thigh to see Angie's face. Angie's eyes were very heavy, and she managed the faintest smile.

            Peggy came back up to kiss her and brought their bodies alongside one another. She looked down then and ran her hand up Angie's other thigh, turning to check her expression just before she touched her. Angie's eyes closed heavily, at once. She seemed to Peggy very relaxed. She opened her eyes after a moment and took Peggy's face in her hands and drew her down into a kiss. The kiss was long and tender, as Peggy moved her fingers across Angie's body. It felt to Peggy as if she was touching her for the first time, as it was made more different by the change in her nails than she had anticipated. She could put her hand right up against Angie without worrying, and eventually her focus stayed more on Angie's response than how she touched her, as it became more intuitive, a movement orchestrated between them, based on more than mere thought.

            Angie drew Peggy into many slow kisses of the deepest intimacy. Peggy felt time moved strangely when they were in bed. She touched Angie far longer than she would have imagined either of them could tolerate. At some point, Peggy touched Angie's body where it opened with a soft and lingering caress. Angie kept Peggy's gaze in a way that conveyed consent, as she gave an almost imperceptible nod. Peggy kissed her, as she gently worked her fingers inside, one tiny bit at a time.

            The feel of it seemed to absorb them both completely for a moment, as Peggy lay with her cheek lightly touching Angie's. The quiet and peace of the room astonished Peggy for a sudden moment. This felt a shared experience outside of time, outside of the world as it usually existed. As she carefully touched Angie, her touch growing fuller and fuller, she perceived how the sensations built in her body, as if pooling up to eventually fill her and spill out. Peggy felt a pleasure that was most profound and seemed utterly nameless. This was the kind of thing one could barely remember once away from it, an experience that defied the capture of the human mind. Most of her experiences of this nature had been ones of suffering. This was their opposite that she had stumbled upon, unsuspectingly. One did know such things existed until one had quite arrived.

            Their movements built, until at last Angie moved her body against the rhythm of Peggy's movements to heighten the sensation of the touch she felt. Peggy felt her arm growing tired, though she hardly cared. She felt it weaken and moved herself overtop of Angie and situated her own thigh against the back of her hand and moved with her whole body now. Angie moaned softly, and Peggy felt herself shift on a sort of instinct to bring her ear closer to Angie's lips. The softest sounds escaped her, and Peggy felt her own body start to tremble as a response.

            The slowness with which the pitch of Angie's pleasure built caused the affect upon Peggy to rise to a height even more profound. She could feel herself trembling, long before she felt Angie's body begin to shake, much in the way of that first night they had shared. Peggy pulled Angie's thigh against herself. Peggy's body pressed down over Angie's, and she had her face hidden in the curve of Angie's shoulder.

            "Peggy," Angie said almost desperately. Peggy drew back to see her face at this. She seemed overcome. Peggy felt that her thighs where shaking in a manner almost severe.

            "Should I stop?" Peggy managed to say. She found it difficult to gain her breath to speak, much less her will in order to stop what they were doing. But she would have if she knew that Angie wanted her to. She searched her face in an instant of doubt.

            "No, don't. Don't stop," Angie said. She spoke almost in gasps, as her hands came to Peggy's face. She drew Peggy into a kiss then put her arms around her and held her hard, as if to draw her even further in. And Peggy tried to take all of her at once with her mouth on Angie's, her body over hers and pressing in, finding every place of pleasure she could. Finally, she brought her mouth to one of Angie's breasts and her free hand to the other. She felt Angie's back bow at once and heard as much as felt her breath drawn in with a sort of gasp of astonishment. She knew at once this would take her over the edge, and she kept on, steady in the rhythm of her touch.

            Angie let go her posture, finally, and her back arched now to press her shoulders into the bed, as her voice came in desperate, gasping cries. They seemed even in that moment like the most beautiful sounds Peggy had ever heard. They escaped her as she shuddered almost violently in Peggy's arms and came to a height of pleasure that seemed to break through her in waves that kept building upon themselves. She dared to draw back to see Angie's face, her eyes held closed and her lips parted, as she succumbed to a moment of pleasure so deep, it could press away all consciousness of Peggy watching her, as she witnessed.  

            When Angie's body relented, and she fell back, Peggy felt herself sink down with her. She felt her lips close to Angie's shoulder, as she lay trying merely to breathe for a moment. Peggy must have stopped breathing at some point, although she could not remember when. She felt her own body shaking, as she herself had also gone through an experience of the most profound ecstasy.

            Peggy brought her face up to kiss Angie. Their kissing went on and on. Peggy at last felt they'd gone from one round of lovemaking and into another somehow. She contemplated bringing them back up again. To her surprise, she felt her own body was tired. The experience she had gone through herself apparently had drawn a great deal out energy out of her.

            Angie seemed to feel the weakness in Peggy's body even as she herself noticed it. She had her arms around Peggy, and she took her by the waist at her sides and rolled them over. She shoved the pillow around to make it so they could lie with their faces right close and still embrace one another. She tilted her head to close the tiny distance between them and kiss Peggy.

            Angie seemed almost shy. She lay in close to Peggy, unable to lean back and look at her face it seemed. Peggy ran her hands over her body and kissed her lips. Their kisses were grown soft and gentle now she found. Angie seemed almost lost inside herself. Peggy felt she wanted to draw Angie out of her timidity. She waited a long while, before she spoke to her softly.

            "Oh, Ang," Peggy said. She felt her own voice come to her waveringly. She felt herself more overcome than she had thought. "If I had known what it was to touch you, I should have grown faint at the thought" Angie leaned back to look at her a moment.

            "I've never been here before," Angie said. Peggy tried to understand what she meant, as Angie turned into her again. She could feel the meaning, it seemed. There were not really words for these things, Peggy felt. She tried to find words herself. Peggy kissed Angie's neck and the line of her shoulder.

            "This is where you belong," Peggy said, "My darling. This is where you have always belonged."

            Angie lay with her forehead pressed lightly against Peggy's collarbone. Peggy held her close, then she reached to move her face back to have a look at her face again. Angie seemed both at peace and deeply overcome. Peggy allowed her fingertips to run across Angie's lips, and all her thoughts focused a moment on the precise shape and feel of her mouth. Then she kissed her again. Angie's arms came around her more tightly now.

            They lay until they both fell into a sort of dreamlike state. Peggy could only guess how long they lay there. She heard Angie's stomach growl faintly.

            "I heard that," Peggy said.

            "Apparently, it's a trend," Angie said. She sort of stretched her body, and Peggy rolled over onto her back. She got herself up briskly, otherwise she felt she never would have.

            She put on a robe. Angie stood up, as well, more of a tumbling out of bed than anything. Peggy looked her up and down briefly but averted her eyes in order to keep herself on mission. She went briskly to Angie's room and brought back her robe.

            "Here you are, my dear," Peggy said. She put the robe on Angie, who stood somewhat abashed by being taken care of even so playfully as this. "Dressed for dinner, now let's be off." Angie laughed. Peggy led the way into the kitchen and pulled out a chair for Angie, who sat down.

            "I thought dinner was my job," Angie said.

            "Only sometimes," Peggy said. She leaned down and kissed Angie on the neck. Angie hid her face in her hand for a moment. "I get to take over on occasion. Besides, you only know how to do productions." Peggy took Angie's apron off a hook and put it on more as a joke than anything else. Angie laughed softly.

            "What's that mean?" Angie said.

            "You know, real meals. I can throw together something faster than you can say, 'Peggy won't you take me back to bed,' and actually mean it," Peggy said.

            "That's pretty fast, girl," Angie said.

            "I love a right good challenge," Peggy said. She had already filled two mugs with milk and poured them into a pot and put on a pan to heat as she said this. Angie watched as Peggy cut bread and cheese and buttered the outsides of two sandwiches, then put them on to grill. She got out a tin of cocoa and mixed it with some sugar into the pot and stirred it with a wire whisk. In minutes, she had them a little meal ready.

            "Hot chocolate and grilled cheese sandwiches," Peggy announced, "A specialty of the Allied Forces. And this was even faster than on a hot plate in a dorm or a cook-stove in a trench."

            "Looks good," Angie said. "I almost beat you, though, lookin' at you lean over the stove in that apron."

            "Angie!" Peggy said in authentic surprise.

            "What?" Angie mumbled over a bite of sandwich. She continued on around her chewing. "Girl's got eyes, doesn't she? That's a lot of legs to be lookin' at."

            "Did you always have a thing for legs?" Peggy asked through her smile.

            "Nope," Angie said. "Not 'til you. You walked out of the automat one day, and all of sudden I thought, 'So that's what they mean.' It was like an epiphany." Peggy laughed and shook her head at Angie's flattery. When they had finished, she moved over to the sink to wash their dishes quickly. As she scoured the milk out the bottom of the pot, she heard Angie's chair scrape the floor. She felt Angie's hands upon her waist, as she drew their bodies together.

            Angie reached her hand under the apron and Peggy's robe and put it between her legs. Peggy hit the water faucet to shut off the flow of water, as she leaned heavily into the counter and grasped the windowsill. She felt unable even to breath for a moment, much less to speak. Desire flooded through her so fast, it swept away any space for her to feel surprise.

            "I got impatient," Angie said, quietly, as she turned Peggy around. She kissed Peggy hard as she pressed her into the counter, putting her leg between Peggy's, which brought her lower than her usual height. After several more kisses, Angie leaned back a bit. "Think we can make it to the bedroom," she said seriously, "Or am I going to have to use this table?"

            Peggy actually glanced at the table a moment before she willed herself to stand up and prepare to follow Angie into the other room. She had a moment of the purest shock at the depths of the affect Angie had on her. She had her jaw gripped in her resolve, and still her legs felt weak as she moved away from the counter. Angie sort of snatched her hand and led her quickly into the other room. Peggy felt astonished by the eagerness with which she allowed herself to be led. It seemed very unlike herself, she had just enough room in her mind to think.

            Peggy found herself in the bed before she knew it with Angie overtop of her. Angie was trying to undress her, and she felt confused a moment by what was happening, then realized Angie was taking off her apron. Despite her current state, Peggy actually laughed at this. Angie tossed the apron on the floor and undid the belt on her robe. She had Peggy naked within moments. Angie leaned back a moment and sort of shook her head at the sight of Peggy.

            "To think I should find myself in bed being quite stripped of an apron," Peggy said. Angie laughed, as she touched her legs. Angie bit at her lip in her smile. "If you had told me this should happen three months ago, I'd have thought the idea utterly absurd."

            "It's pretty serious now," Angie said. "You can put on some fatigues if you want. I could probably get those off ya'. Might like it, too." Peggy laughed hard at that even in the moment.

            "So many things still to discover about you," Peggy said still laughing, as she raised one eyebrow, as she eyed Angie up and down.

            "Plenty of things I don't know," Angie said with the slightest of shrugs. "Guess I'll figure them all out eventually."

            "Plenty of them with me, I hope," Peggy said.

            "Definitely," Angie said. "I got plenty of time on my hands." Peggy cut her last word off slightly by pulling Angie by the lapels of her robe into a kiss.

            They kissed almost fiercely. Through their kissing, Peggy drew off Angie's robe and put it aside. She put her arms around her and held her close, and she took a moment to enjoy the feeling of embracing a lover so fully as this without even the slightest resistance or fear. She felt really lucky and felt herself grin when Angie drew back to look at her face. Angie smiled softly, her eyes heavy with desire. She kissed Peggy again and started to touch her with more intent now by the feel of it.

            Peggy thought after a moment that she might have to provoke Angie to move on faster, but Angie saw it in her face or felt it in her body. She touched Peggy right away, and at once Peggy's head fell back. She felt herself groan softly at the feel. Angie put her mouth to the base of Peggy's throat, and the touch felt that it could easily send a sensation all through her from her shoulders down to her waist. She moved her body with Angie and attempted to find a rhythm so that she could establish herself in the sensations of it all. She found it easily with Angie watching her and deliberately matching her.

            When Peggy felt Angie inside of her this time, she purposefully moved with it. She meant to draw her in, as Angie touched her in different ways and watched for her response, finding Peggy out. Angie put her hand in the small of Peggy's back, as they set up the first, slow rhythm with Angie reaching deeper it seemed with each moment that passed. Peggy grew almost faint with the feel of all this, and she realized she needed to remind herself in order to keep breathing. She did so willfully, as she recognized that she had been underprepared for the sensations such a touch would bring to her. Peggy brought herself up to look down and see as Angie touched her. She glanced then to Angie's face and saw how closely Angie watched every response.

            "Is it all right?" Angie said in a voice so soft it felt nearly whispered.

            Peggy nodded heavily. She felt herself to be quite speechless and grown heavy with it all. Angie pressed into her, and Peggy felt herself groan without intending to and shudder. Angie did it again, and Peggy groaned at once, as her eyes closed. She felt it as almost too much, as if she should be overcome. She gathered herself somewhat internally. In a vague, felt moment of desperation, she leaned forward to kiss Angie again.

            Angie must have felt some sense of all this, for she changed the way she was touching Peggy just as they kissed. She stroked her now with her thumb, and this seemed to add a quality that allowed Peggy to breath and to tolerate the intensity. She continued kissing Angie and felt unabashed now by the sounds that escaped from her chest in response to the pleasure that arrested her.

            Angie lay down beside Peggy, suddenly, and moved herself to reach under Peggy's thigh with one hand. She had both hands touching Peggy now. And Peggy found herself in that same position as the first night, propped up now by the pillows as well as her own hands. She willfully kept her legs from pressing together as they wished and instead tried to focus on allowing the sensations in her body to build so that they might ascend and find her release.

            This must not have taken her very long, but Peggy could not have said as her mind seemed to wink out almost entirely. Even the sensations she felt in her body were no longer distinct. She seemed to have become permeated utterly by Angie's touch on her body. When she felt the distinct beginnings of a tremulous building of pleasure that she knew would bring her release, she felt already a deep sense of relief. She breathed more easily now and allowed her body to move without willful thought through a sort of embodied intuition. She felt her body tremble and found that the pleasure as it coursed through her seemed to also control her breath. She sank back onto her elbows as she was overcome, the feeling of release surprising her, as it arrested her more fully and heightened the sensations in her body for a long while, before finally bringing her down into a felt relief.

            Peggy lay back and felt the softest touches on her body, as Angie watched her and waited until she could not tolerate anymore. At last, Angie let go of her body. Angie moved over and kissed the bones of Peggy's hips and soft curves just inside and over her low stomach in between, which seemed to send sensations through the core of Peggy still. She buried her hands in Angie's hair and lay trying to breath fully again.

            Peggy found herself somehow surprised not have been hurt. Why should she have been? she thought when she realized this. She thought, almost sarcastically, that Angie was not an idiot and did not blunder her way through their love-making. It seemed to Peggy that all of her own thoughts about sex were mixed up even despite herself. Who would concede to being injured in bed? she wondered. But apparently she had been in some unconscious level of thought. She felt almost a relief at how things were turning out in her love life in this first partnership that she had decided to let form. Peggy shook her head with a small laugh and gave a sort of sigh at her thoughts. Angie came up on her elbows to look at Peggy.

            "I take it that's not disappointment," Angie said with the lightest tease.

            "No, for goodness' sake, Ang," Peggy said. She let her hand fall over onto Angie's hip. Angie just lay there smiling for a long moment. She crawled up then to kiss Peggy, and their mouths felt quite soft as the pressed to one another's now. Somehow the quality of their kiss in this moment reminded Peggy that they were really friends. That's why it was all so good between them, Peggy suspected. They could shift in and out of something as fine as this. Peggy helped lead Angie to move around and lay beside her. They entwined their hands in between them on the bed.

            Peggy lay thinking a while in the gentle stillness of the room. Even this second time that Angie had made love to her, Peggy still felt that she had not lost anything, nor been changed in any defining way. Perhaps it would be different with a male lover, but Peggy seriously doubted that it would. Pretty much everything, she felt with the greatest conviction, that this world had to say about women was nothing more than a vast store of the most ridiculous fictions. She ought not to be so surprised then to find that nearly everything the world had to say about sex was quite the same.

            Peggy looked over Angie, lying next to her, and wondered how she felt about it all. As Peggy considered any change that might have taken place in herself on some deeply seated, intrinsic level, she felt there was something that she had gained, not something she had lost. Nor, she felt, was this anything she had taken away from Angie. These experiences were a part of Peggy that could not be lost even if Angie were to go away from her now. She would carry it in her heart, even if it went quietly unnoticed much of the time. She knew she would continue to be transformed by it even then. She smiled as she remembered herself saying to Angie once _I intend to keep myself when I am with you and forever after_. She though Angie would be more inclined to keep herself, as well, given what they'd shared already. They both would.


	7. The Life of Desire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this epilogue chapter to Shelter From the Day set a couple of years afterwards, Peggy returns to New York after a trip to Europe. She feels her grief from the War and the loss of Steve stirred up afterwards. Angie receives a "top secret" package from Mr. Jarvis. Through her love affair with Angie, Peggy manages to process her grief, and both of them claim once again their right to live according to their own desires.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated to bittergreens and all the lovely readers who supported this series, especially to Convict626 and all of you who left me such kind and generous comments! I hope this chapter was worth the wait! My best excuse is that I was working on my other writing!

            Peggy made a beeline for the ladies' room of the New York airport on legs that felt strong but a bit shaky.  She decided to let everyone else claim their luggage rather than waiting. Hers would be easier to find that way. Her head was swimming from the flight, all the alcohol she drank with friends in England just before she got onto the plane, and from being kicked in the neck about five days prior to this. Even though the trip was a good one and the pay for the job she took was excellent, it left her smarting, and her physical body was not all that hurt.  Seeing some of boys from the front always made her heart ache for everyone they lost and most of all for Steve.

            She checked her make-up in the mirror and glanced to see that the bruise on her neck was well faded.  She had dodged the kick, but she still got clipped before she caught the security guard trying to take her down behind the knee and slammed him to the ground. She nearly could have cursed herself in this moment for ever taking another silly mission to recover stolen patents and leaving home for a prolonged chase around Europe.  She was gaining a reputation from her previous work and felt resentful of becoming a patents nanny who ran around and corrected and tidied the ill behavior of rich men.  At least it counted this time.  She retrieved a formula for a line of drugs that would have taken years to be released in the United States otherwise.  Only now it would take years for it to be released in many parts of Europe.  She redistributed both the suffering and the profits, and the idea left her quite miserable.

            When she collected her suitcase and came out through the final corridor, she found Mr. Jarvis waiting for her.  She saw him shaking his fist at his side, nervous that she did not come out with the others.  He relaxed when he saw her and gave her a sideways grin.  He reached to take her suitcase before saying hello. She simply allowed him to take it and found herself relinquishing her bag as well as he reached for it.

            "All well on the home front, Mr. Jarvis?" Peggy asked.

            "Splendid, actually," Mr. Jarvis said, "Except we've all been missing you, of course."

            "You flatter me," Peggy said. 

            "It went well?" Mr. Jarvis said. 

            "Indeed. Why shouldn't it have?" Peggy said, assuming he meant the mission. 

            "Yes, well," Mr. Jarvis said and dropped whatever he thought to say next.

            He led them out to the car, conspicuously parked near the front doors and not in any parking space.  Peggy held in a sigh of disgust, as she knew that this meant the airport security recognized Howard's car.  Mr. Jarvis took the liberty of allowing them to treat both the car and Peggy as elite property.  Given her current state, she merely sighed, accepted this, and got into the car.

            They chatted a bit, as Mr. Jarvis got them out onto the main road. He always nervously adjusted his mirrors the first few minutes along the road.  Peggy felt herself wanting to smile at the familiar sight.  It really was good to be home, she felt already, and she had not even seen Angie yet.

            "If you don't mind my saying," Mr. Jarvis said, "You do look a bit worse for wear." 

            "I've just come off a transatlantic flight," Peggy said. "What do you want from me, a fashion show?"  Mr. Jarvis blanched, as he murmured a sort of no. 

            "I don't mean that at all," Mr. Jarvis said.  "You're as stunning as ever." Peggy felt her jaw clench. "I meant more that you just seem a bit low in spirits.  Friends notice that sort of thing.  It's our sacred duty."  Peggy stared out the window without answering. 

            "Must have been strange traveling in an area that used to be the front of our war," Mr. Jarvis said. 

            "At least, we still get the chance to travel in it," Peggy said. She kept looking out the window but lost her focus.  "There were so many who weren't there to be seen at all." 

            "I understand," Mr. Jarvis said.  Peggy felt herself soften at his tone.  She felt that she would rather that they be teasing one another, but Mr. Jarvis knew her too well and could see the gravity held in her mere posture.  He had guessed its source. 

            Outside of her apartment, Peggy convinced Mr. Jarvis to stay in the car. She promised to meet him for breakfast in a few days time.  He dragged a plain parcel wrapped in brown paper from the backseat and told her it was for Miss Martinelli.  Peggy sat her suitcase against the front door to unlocked it and came back to grab the parcel afterwards. 

            "These are rather sensitive materials, you understand," Mr. Jarvis said. He scratched nervously at his cheek, as Peggy took the package from his hands. 

            "Top secret stuff," Peggy said.  "I understand and shall treat it as such.  I'm bulletproof you know.  Or perhaps rather bullet resistant." Mr. Jarvis nodded and did not laugh.  He handed the package over reluctantly.  He gave Peggy a wave and a soft grin, as he left. 

            Peggy got the kettle on and the bath water running.  She felt determined to remain awake until Angie came home from her rehearsal.  She took a cup of tea to the bath with her, and amidst those two comforts, she grew so relaxed, it felt almost beyond merely sleeping.   As she cooled down from the bath, she got her suitcase open and partly unpacked.  She put the packages that she got for Angie on the bed along with Mr. Jarvis's secret parcel.  She wondered if there would be a cake or a nut bread inside when Angie opened it given his usual, unnecessary severity.  She was just reaching in her chest of drawers to get out a set of pajamas for herself when she heard the front door open as Angie arrived home. 

            "I believe there's a spy in my house," Angie said, as she popped her head into the doorway a moment later.  She grinned over at Peggy.  She came into the room fully and dropped her bag at the foot of the bed, as she came to embrace Peggy.  She looked over Peggy's face when she leaned back and smiled as she studied her, as if to read the quality of her trip there on her expression.

            Peggy waited as long as she could manage, before she took Angie's face into her hands and kissed her.  She felt that she had almost forgotten the precise feel and taste of Angie's mouth upon her own and the soft way her breath would catch and all but hold at first. She leaned her head forward into Angie's shoulder afterwards.  As Angie's hands ran over her shoulders, Peggy breathed in her familiar smell and felt that she was actually home. 

            Angie let go of Peggy, reluctantly, so Peggy could finish getting herself dressed for bed.  Angie looked over at the packages laid out on her side of their bed.  She took off her own shoes and her jewelry.

            "What's all this?" Angie asked. 

            "Presents from Europe and one top secret package from Mr. Jarvis," Peggy said.

            "So how'd your trip treat you overall?" Angie said. 

            "It was good," Peggy said.

            "Was it?" Angie asked.  She seemed a bit skeptical.  "You look serious as the grave."

            "As the mass grave of Europe, actually," Peggy said. 

            Angie stood after a moment and gave Peggy another long hug.  She sat down on the edge of the bed again closer to Peggy. She glanced at the packages again as if considering whether to open them.  She was always terribly curious about surprises. Peggy got her pajamas out, and Angie paid more attention to her.  She made a slight grin and leaned back onto her hands to watch Peggy take off her robe.  Peggy shook her head slightly and kept facing Angie, as she dressed for bed. Angie grew distracted for a moment by the sight of Peggy's body.

            "Geeze, Peg," Angie said.  "Look how skinny you are.  You couldn't find girl to cook for you over there, with all your looks?"

            "I think it's rather more from vomiting up a pint of vodka in Russia than not eating," Peggy said. 

            "Seriously?" Angie said. 

            "I made some rather poor decisions while away," Peggy said, "For old times' sake." 

            "You sleep with a man you didn't like the look of in the morning?" Angie teased her.  Peggy made a scoff. She got her pajamas buttoned. "It ain't no fun if you don't take the bait," Angie said to her more gently in order to take back her tease when Peggy did not answer in kind.

            "I think I'm a bit too exhausted for teasing tonight," Peggy said.

            "Okay. What should I do with you tonight, then? What are you awake enough for? " Angie said.  She gave Peggy a noticeably mischievous grin and leaned forward on the bed to reach out and get her behind the knee.  Peggy stepped in close to her and felt herself smile.

            "Flirting is just fine," Peggy said and actually grew abashed.

            "Oh yeah," Angie said.  "How about seducing?" 

            "Mm," Peggy said, "Perhaps if you're very soft about it."

            "I'm sure I can manage that," Angie said, as she leaned her head forward into Peggy's stomach.  She ran her hands over the small of Peggy's back under the edge of her shirt, and Peggy felt her knees wanting to give out already. 

            Angie let Peggy go for the moment.  She cleared off the bed, quickly, and changed into some night clothes herself. Peggy climbed in under the covers right away.  She recounted a few details from her trip and felt her head wanting to pound again already. Angie could tell, and she dropped the subject and climbed into bed next to Peggy as soon as she could. She drew Peggy in close to kiss her instead of talking. 

            Peggy felt herself move into a state almost like dreaming now that she was in Angie's arms.  Her mind would flicker up thoughts and images that seemed to stand alone, mere fragments of consciousness.  She found herself distinctly aware of the feel of Angie's mouth touching her own, her hand as it moved down into the small of Peggy's back, up over her side, onto her neck and shoulder.  She felt uniquely sensitive, and the feel made her almost imagine that she was much younger and inexperienced than she usually felt. 

            Angie must have felt something of Peggy's mood, because despite her claims of impending seduction, she merely kissed her for an incredibly long spell of time. Peggy realized she was falling asleep. She leaned back to apologize to Angie, and she felt that Angie read her movement as a sign and moved to get into one of their usual sleeping positions.  Peggy followed suit and allowed her rather strange inclination to apologize die out. 

            Peggy awoke in the middle of the night from a nightmare.  She felt the stark, raw feel of sweat on her skin in the cool room.  She dreamed of Dresden and the fire bombs.  Somehow, since the war, her mind did not seem to distinguish between horrors inflicted on friends and foes.  The entire war felt a horror to her now.  In her dream, she and Steve had been watching the city being bombed from a plane. He had no parachute on, but he was going to jump. 

            "You can't do anything," Peggy had said to him.  She knew that he would jump anyway. She held onto his arm for just a moment and tried to decide whether or not she would jump when he did. She awoke still wondering and undecided. 

            Peggy sat herself up.  She looked to make sure she had not woken Angie.  She slept too soundly to awaken so easily.  Peggy took her shirt off and wiped the sweat away from her skin with the fabric that felt strangely warm and soft against her skin. She went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water.  She rubbed at her stiff neck, as she leaned against the edge of the sink. She had to go and meet with the patent owner early tomorrow.  The moon was bright, and she could see out the kitchen window, despite the light from the lamp in the hallway.  The gardens outside were utterly still and pristine in the moonlight. Peace felt strange to Peggy tonight.  Peggy wondered if in some way it always would. 

            She got back into bed and lay trying to calm her mind.  Clearly, her nerves were rattled from her trip. Even her body felt a bit wrung out from it, she realized.  She imagined that she would calm herself fully again over the coming days and tried to tell herself this so she could fall asleep.  To her surprise, Angie awoke slightly.  She moved over and got her arms around Peggy.  She touched the curve of her shoulder and the side of her face before falling asleep again.  Peggy lay awake for a while and focused on the painful, empty feeling at the center of her chest.  She tried to focus on the feel of Angie next to her in bed to sooth it and finally fell asleep. 

            Peggy imagined that she had shaken the strange grief that overtook her in Europe after a few days passed in New York.  First, she held out on returning the patent, until its owner agreed to a simultaneous transnational release.  It would cut down on his profits, but he had to agree given the circumstances.  Peggy hoped that making herself a problematic patents nanny might at the very least redistribute her in her field.  She spent the following days catching up on the newspapers that Angie saved for her return, eating the elaborate meals that Angie insisted on making for them in order to "fatten her up properly," as she put it, and making love with Angie at all hours of the day.  She found it very hard to feel particularly bad about anything.  Only in small moments would the distinct pain in her chest catch her attention. 

            She felt delighted when Angie opened her presents and loved each one of them – a small set of nesting dolls from Russia, one particularly fine, elegant scarf Peggy found in France that reminded her of Angie's taste, a good old tin of treacle and one of custard from England, and all the rare and unfamiliar spices Peggy came across along the way.   She noticed that Angie did not open the package from Mr. Jarvis but tucked it away on her dresser instead.  She noticed it had been cut, when she came back from having breakfast with Mr. Jarvis and Angie had been home alone. She tried not to analyze Angie, as if she were the subject of some inquiry, but old habits were hard to break. She asked her outright what it was.

            "You want to know?" Angie said.  Peggy found this a strange response.

            "Of course," Peggy said.  "Why shouldn't I?"  Angie cleared her throat. 

            "Okay," Angie said.  She went and got the box and handed it to Peggy.  "Here you go." 

            Peggy did her absolute best to contain an exclamation of surprise, as she looked into the box.  Angie had clearly ordered a sex toy from Mr. Jarvis, and he had delivered one as promised. The shape was decidedly phallic, and it had a lovely padded arrangement of straps beneath that Peggy assumed went with it.  She wondered if Mr. Jarvis had done the sewing himself, as if it seemed oddly matched to Angie's aesthetic sensibilities.  There was a fine lace along the edges.  She did her best not to act too surprised and reached into the box to pick it up, curious to feel how heavy it was.  She thought it was made of some kind of rubber, though on closer inspection, it felt synthetic.  She wondered if Howard had anything to do with it and wished that she had not wondered this and dismissed that line of thought. 

            "Is that what you expected?" Angie asked. 

            "Decidedly not," Peggy admitted. 

            "I just figured that I'd never get a chance again, if I didn't go through him," Angie said. 

            "How did you know that something like this even existed?" Peggy said. Angie looked offended at her question to Peggy's surprise.  

            "A girl's got some imagination, Peg," Angie said.  "I heard about something like this in a play recently, as well, and that got me to finally ask him.  He offered a long time ago, you remember?"

            "I don't, honestly," Peggy said. 

            "Well, if you're interested in trying it, just say the word.  Otherwise, I'm keeping this tucked away for a rainy day with a girl way down the road from now," Angie said.  She took the box and folded the leaves again and put it back on her dresser.  Peggy could tell that she was keeping it there until she thought of the right container and place to store it.  She was very organized, and the proper place for such a thing was a new riddle.

            "I might be interested," Peggy said.  "I hadn't really thought about it." 

            "No pressure, mind," Angie said, as she sat back down on the bed.

            "You're wonderfully brave, you know that?" Peggy said.  Angie looked over at her and smiled, clearly both flattered and surprised to hear her say this all of a sudden. 

            "Why's that?" Angie said.  "Cause that kind of thing is illegal?"

            "No," Peggy said.  "You just know what you want in life and take risks to actually get it. I find it rather remarkable to witness, actually." 

            "Thanks, Peg," Angie said.  "I learned pretty much everything I know from you, sweetie."

            "I doubt that very much, my darling," Peggy said.  "You were causing trouble long before we met."

            "Fair," Angie said.  "I got myself into all kind of stuff back then.  I just get myself into the stuff I want now.  Maybe you improved my tactical operations." Peggy laughed at the stolen phrase and knew she was being teased. 

            They stayed up late that night making love together, and a rain storm awoke Peggy momentarily around four in the morning.  She could feel her body wanting her to get up, as it could not tell the different between four and five a.m. quite yet.  She lay awake for a long time and finally got herself to fall back asleep.  She could feel the sun beginning to lighten the sky through her eyelids just as she did.

            Peggy dreamed of Steve again.  Only it was a different dream this time.  They were in bed together, and Peggy knew for absolute certain that the war was over.  The bed they were in was narrow and unfamiliar.  There was a set of windows over their heads, and strong, morning sunlight streamed in over the two of them.  The light illuminated Steve's back, which Peggy could feel under her hands. She knew his form in the dream, so familiar that it took away all the felt sense of strangeness from the room.  They had been lovers for some time, and they were making love now. 

            Peggy marveled even in the dream at how whole and unharmed Steve's body felt. His cheek felt soft against her own, as if he had just shaved.  Peggy could feel, as distinctly as if her body actually remembered the feel of it, how Steve's body felt as he pressed into her.  She could feel it deep in the back inside her body, where no one else had ever touched her before.  She turned his face to kiss him, and his mouth felt soft.  As soft and delicate as a woman's mouth against her own, Peggy thought.

            Even in the dream Peggy closed her eyes.  Her mouth wanted to keep on tasting Steve, but his taste felt faint and seemed to be fading.  Her mouth tasted like tears, and she remembered even before she awoke fully that Steve was gone.  She opened her eyes to the strong light of morning and found herself weeping. 

            Angie awoke.  She looked hard at Peggy, and then she moved over and got her arms around her.  She touched her gently. 

            "Come here," Angie said to her softly. 

            Peggy felt herself calming already, as her mind awoke fully. She felt that the pain in her chest had finally broken open.  She tried to get the distinct, vivid quality of that dream out of her mind, or more so out of her body.  She could feel with an ache that made desire into a torment how much she wanted Steve.

            Somehow, she never felt sad over this before, not exactly, Peggy realized. She grieved the loss of Steve in dozens of ways, but she never quite found herself able to think of the matter directly enough to miss the sex they would have had together.  She felt slightly astonished on both sides of this, both to be thinking such a thing directly and never to have thought it before. It seemed quite obvious now. That was a thing to miss, and Peggy knew it, even if she did not get to know it from experience. It felt now even more of a loss that way. 

            Now that she was awake, Peggy gained more of a sense of herself in her life as it was now.  She was far away from Europe, and she was far away from the loss of Steve.  She could feel what all she had around her again. She got lucky, Peggy knew. It was not deserved more than those who got unlucky deserved their luck, but still it ought to be appreciated fully.  She lay in bed with Angie, who fell back asleep, and kissed her hair. 

            Peggy felt herself  grow calm after that morning, as if she finally returned fully from her trip. The memory of her dream of making love with Steve lingered, however, and felt less painful and immediately tragic to her.  Angie got a box about the right size and started placing Mr. Jarvis's device, as Peggy thought of it, into it. 

            "Don't put that too far away," Peggy said from the bed, as she looked up from her book.  Angie turned to look over her shoulder at Peggy in clear surprise. 

            "All right," Angie said.  She tucked it into the front edge of her top drawer.  She gave Peggy a little curious look afterwards.

            "I do want it, it turns out," Peggy said. 

            "Yeah?" Angie said clearly curious about Peggy's change of mind. Peggy put the magazine she was reading down in her lap.  She tried to think of how to say what she wanted to say.  The thought of her dream came over her, but she could not explain that.  She thought for another moment, before she spoke. 

            "I want it all, Angie," Peggy said.  "I don't want to miss out on anything." Angie gave a grin with one side of her mouth, but her eyes seemed soft.  She seemed to feel the gravity in Peggy's tone.

            "Yeah," Angie said.  "I feel that same way." 

            Peggy got the sense that somehow Angie really did know what she meant. She thought that Angie lived that way all the time, trying to take in fully whatever good life offered her. Sometimes, it seemed like Angie assumed that each moment of sweetness might be the last one that ever came. Peggy thought it was part of her wisdom, something worth gaining more herself. 

 

            The matter did not come up again until several days later. Angie had the night off from rehearsals, so they had gone to a matinee showing of a play and met up with friends for an early dinner.  They walked around the streets of New York for a while afterwards just to enjoy it. At one point, Angie had pointed to a bin of flowers along the sidewalk.

            "You want one of those?" Angie asked Peggy.

            "Not really," Peggy said. 

            She almost stammered, she felt so surprised by the question. She almost wished the answer were yes.  But Angie pointed immediately across the street to a doughnut stand. 

            "How about one of those?" Angie said.  Peggy realized she was setting Peggy up before. She knew both answers before she spoke.

            "Absolutely," Peggy said.  She stood away from the seller's line of sight so she could laugh, as Angie bought her a doughnut.

            "Here you go, love," Angie said.  They walked on, as Peggy started to eat it.  "That doughnut represents my love for you, and also your beauty," Angie said.  Peggy finished the bite she had just taken trying not to laugh.

            "Does it?" Peggy said. 

            "Yeah," Angie said severely.  "If some guy can take the top off a plant someone else grew and say that, then I can take that magnificent round of flour and sugar and oil someone else crafted and say the same thing.  That's basically science, Peggy." 

            "I agree," Peggy said.  "Well, thank you.  It really is an excellent doughnut." 

            "Only the best sidewalk fare for my own amazing girl," Angie joked.

            They kept up their joking and good mood on the rest of the walk home. When they got inside, Peggy made a cup of tea.  She was glad to see that it was not yet late, as they had eaten an early dinner. Angie shuffled through records in the front room while Peggy made her tea.  She finally picked a song and got it going.    

            Peggy put the cup down when she came in and dragged Angie in near to herself. Angie laughed and put her arms around Peggy's neck, knowing that she was pulling her into a dance. Peggy considered how comfortable Angie was while dancing nowadays.  She was as good as Peggy and maybe even a little better.  Peggy noticed that their heels touched the hardwood floor with soft taps.  Angie barely seemed to notice these days, even though at one point she would have grown anxious and moved them over onto the rug.  All her attention was focused on Peggy now. 

            The song was not particularly slow, but Peggy felt their dancing grow slow anyway.  Angie reached up finally to bring her hand to Peggy's cheek and draw her into a kiss. Her hand moved up to touch Peggy's hair.  Peggy had put some of it up with pins, and she felt Angie's hands deftly begin to remove them. She sat them on the end table afterwards and pushed her hands into Peggy's hair, as they kept on dancing softly together. 

            When they song ended, they kept on dancing for a prolonged moment. The scratch of the needle kept sounding, and Peggy stepped away to change the record. She changed her mind instead and turned off the record player.  She turned to Angie and saw her make a sly little grin, as she could already guess what that choice meant. 

            Something about the sight of Angie's face giving her this grin hit Peggy particularly hard tonight.  She turned back to the record player a moment, then let herself be overcome by her own impulse.  She crossed over and pulled Angie hard against herself and into a rather passionate kiss. Angie read Peggy's body language and managed to get her arms around her neck even as she swept her up.  

            They kissed hard for a long moment.  Peggy noticed how their mouths would match to one another's easily, after being together for so long.  The movement took no thought and came with a practiced ease. She had her hand in the small of Angie's back to hold her up against herself and knew that Angie stood on her toes to reach her more easily.  She let some of her weight balance against Peggy, trusting how she held her, and put her hands on the sides of Peggy's neck instead of holding onto her shoulders.  Peggy had the other hand rested lightly against Angie's back, and she brought it around to run down the side of Angie's neck to her chest.  She heard Angie give a soft sound at the feel of it and grow a little heavier in Peggy's arms. 

            Peggy reached around and unzipped Angie's dress in the back. She got her hand on the back of Angie's neck and tipped her weight back a little more, as she continued to kiss her and made some space between the two of them.  She reached up with the other hand to draw the dress down off Angie's arms.  She felt the fabric catch on her bracelet and come free.  She pushed it down off her hips and felt Angie reach down to help her. She felt the warm, silk fabric of Angie's slip under her hands, as she drew her body against her own again.

            Peggy had to break away from their kissing to decide what to do next. She could see that Angie was completely with her and ready to follow her lead.  She glanced down at the slip.  She felt an impulse to take the collar in both hands and rip it open and get it off Angie with great immediacy.  Angie must have read this in Peggy's look, because she reached down to whip it off herself quickly.  Peggy's hands followed hers to help.  She began to unwork the clasps at the back of Angie's brassiere, as Angie stepped in close to her to kiss her again. She dragged it down off Angie's arms and dropped it to the side without disrupting their kiss.

            She let her hands move across Angie's naked shoulders and felt the imprint of the straps in her skin.  She put her hand to the side of Angie's face and kissed her way down her neck on the other side and onto her shoulder.  Her hand came around to hold Angie's breast almost without thinking. She heard Angie give a moan that barely escaped her throat.  She turned into Peggy's kiss and held her harder.  Peggy bent her knees to kiss down over Angie's collarbone, as she moved her hand away to kiss her breast.  Angie gave the slightest cry at this.  Peggy stood up fully and moved Angie around, so she could sit her down on the couch. 

            Peggy kneeled down in front of Angie and took off Angie's shoes, before she brought her hands to Angie's sides.  She pulled her forward, as she leaned in close to her.  She kissed her breasts and felt Angie's breath flicker in her chest.  Her hands held Peggy's shoulders and pressed into her hair.  Peggy used just her fingertips, so she could touch both at once. She felt Angie growing heavier in her arms, as the sounds of pleasure she gave remained soft but became more prolonged.  She sounds seemed to pour out of her and into Peggy, the most delicious liquor that blocked out any other thought or focus. 

            She kept on for an incredibly long time and kissed Angie's throat and chest and ran her hands down on her body in long, steady strokes.  She took herself well past the point where she first imagined that she could not wait anymore.  Then she made herself draw back and go easy, as she unclasped the garter belts that held up Angie's stockings and removed them. She let her hands slide down each of her legs.  She rolled down the top edge of Angie's girdle and carefully dragged it down off her hips.

            Peggy drew Angie lower on the couch by the backs of her knees. She leaned in to bring her body against Angie's and kiss her again.  She felt Angie's hands on her shoulders, through her shirt, and wished that she was naked herself, so she could feel her skin against her own. She could not gather the patience to lean back and get herself undressed, and she let her hand go up Angie's thigh instead.  She felt Angie holding herself tense in anticipation, as Peggy's hand came between her legs. They kissed, as she touched Angie. She felt Angie relax at the feel of her touch and sink back into the cushions of the couch. 

            She knew that it would not last long, since she had spent so much time kissing Angie's breasts before she touched her this way.  Peggy tried to keep her touch light to make it last a little longer.  She kissed Angie for as long as she could tolerate waiting, before she finally leaned back and came down to place her mouth between Angie's legs.  She felt Angie's hand flat against her own shoulder blade and knew that she drew in a deep breath that came out in a slow and shaky exhalation.  Peggy felt Angie sinking further down in the couch, as she relaxed completely into Peggy's hands and the feel of her touch. 

            As the sounds she made increased, Angie rolled forward a bit onto her shoulder to reach down and touch Peggy's neck and face.  The cries still felt soft to Peggy, as they grew even more prolonged.  She brought her hand to press her fingers into Angie's body only slightly.  She found a place that felt heavy and sensitive at the front of her body and kept pressing there, careful to use the pads of her fingers.  She kept her mouth on Angie and knew that she held her own breath, as Angie tried not to hold her own.  She leaned forward with a kind of shudder and a series of cries that made Peggy groan, as she finally came to a climax of pleasure.  Peggy grew very soft and kept on touching Angie for as long as she felt that she could tolerate.  She drew away reluctantly after and rested for a moment. 

            She felt Angie grasp her shoulder and came up to kiss with her again. As she often would at the end of an encounter, Angie gave a soft moan, as their mouths pressed together. She seemed starved, as if she had been waiting for Peggy's kiss the entire time.  Peggy took her face in her hands and kept on kissing her, as if to make up for the lost time.  She finally felt Angie's mouth grow soft against her own and let her kisses gradually grow lighter.  She felt Angie's hands on her face draw her back slightly. 

            "Let me take you to bed," Angie said. 

            Peggy smiled at this and made a sound that said she agreed.  She did not manage to stop kissing Angie, so they could move, for several long minutes.  She felt a bit astonished to find herself completely dressed when she stood up again.  She gathered up all of the Angie's things to carry into the bedroom, as Angie stepped into the kitchen to get a drink of water.  She came back holding a glass.  Angie glanced at Peggy and back at something across the room. She rubbed her nose lightly and pointed.  Peggy had all of Angie's things gathered in her hands. 

            "You never got to have your tea," Angie said. 

            Peggy stepped over to the cup, as she bundled all the clothes and the pair of shoes into one hand to free the other, and drank it in one, long drink, knowing it would be cool already.  She came and grabbed Angie's hand after setting the cup down with a thump, as Angie grinned and laughed a little at her. 

            Angie kissed Peggy a few times when they came into the room. She stepped away a moment to go to the bathroom.  Peggy put down Angie's things on a chair that sat beside her dresser.  She undid her own dress and stepped out of it and then sat on the bed and took off her shoes.  She thought of the box in Angie's drawer in front of her as she did.  She stood as Angie came back and crossed over to her.  They dropped their jewelry on top of the dresser, and Angie undressed Peggy fully. She had turned Peggy around, and Peggy felt Angie run her hands down along the muscles in her back, feeling their familiar, elaborate architecture, as Peggy leaned forward slightly to allow her to do it.  Her fingertips touched the scars over Peggy's shoulder blade lightly, before she turned Peggy around and kissed her. 

            Peggy let her go of their kissing to climb into the bed.  Angie came in after her and leaned in to kiss her more. She settled onto her knees beside Peggy rather than coming overtop of her.  Her hand came to Peggy's stomach, and Peggy felt herself almost flinch with anticipation.  Angie ran her hands from the sides of Peggy's face all the way down to her hips. She did this several times, making Peggy's back bow every time she did.  Then she pressed her palms against Peggy's breasts and kneaded them until she felt them grow full and less sensitive.  She took Peggy's nipples between her fingers and worked them, which made Peggy give a cry that was muffled by their continued kissing.

            Angie slipped her hand down over Peggy's stomach to her hip then in between her legs.  Peggy's head tipped back, and she felt her body give a shudder.  Angie moved down a bit to kiss her exposed throat, as she continued to touch Peggy's breasts with her other hand.  She opened Peggy up carefully and pressed into her almost softly.  She brought her mouth to one of Peggy's breasts, as she moved inside of her.  She worked at Peggy's body, lost in total focus, as she easily read what she wanted and how her touch on Peggy's body felt from her response.  Soon she was pressing three fingers into Peggy almost hard.  She moved herself down a bit to press in harder, trying to reach a place she knew that Peggy wanted to be touched. 

            Peggy knew the place was deeper in than Angie could reach.  In the past, when this happened, she imagined herself merely insatiable in such moments as this.  She knew that if Angie kept on, eventually she would find herself overcome with pleasure.  Tonight, she thought to ask her to try to use the toy to reach in further. She took a long moment to get her voice.  Angie could already tell she working herself up to saying something and leaned up before she spoke. Peggy had a hard time getting her voice to come out in such a state of passion. 

            "Will you try your toy on me?" Peggy asked. 

            "Yeah," Angie said immediately. 

            She took a long moment to continue to touch Peggy.  She drew away gradually, as much to tolerate it herself, Peggy could tell, as for Peggy.  They both found it difficult to stop, but knew they could come back to this almost easily.  Angie sat back and glanced over at the dresser.  She took a moment to steady herself, before she climbed out of the bed. 

            Peggy felt her own breath growing lighter, as she looked over to watch Angie. She sat the box on the dresser and opened it.  Peggy waited a long moment and saw Angie looking over the straps.  She imagined that she was trying to decipher how they worked and assumed it was rather hard to think in this particular moment.

            Peggy climbed out of bed to help her.  She came up behind her and put her hands lightly to Angie's sides. Now that she stood close, she could feel that Angie held herself tensed and her breath had grown shallow. She looked over Angie's shoulder and saw her hands trembling as they held the straps. 

            "Are you nervous, darling?" Peggy asked. 

            "I'm afraid I'll really feel like a guy," Angie said. 

            Peggy did not know precisely what Angie meant by this.  Angie turned around to face Peggy. Peggy held Angie's arms in her hands and tried to think of what to say to comfort her.  She looked over Angie's expression grown very slightly dim and distant. 

            "There's no one here but you and me, love," Peggy said to her, not knowing what else she might say. 

            She reached to put her hand on Angie's face and leaned in closer to her. Angie held the back of her wrist and seemed to settle into this moment with Peggy once more. Peggy did not know where she had gone in her mind.  Angie took a deep breath and let it out in a fragile sigh. 

            Peggy tipped Angie's face up to kiss her again and felt her grow more confident. Peggy let her go and picked up the toy to look over the straps.  She could tell the worked oddly like a parachute harness only on a smaller scale. She threaded the straps through properly, and it came together quickly. 

            "Here," Peggy said. 

            She turned Angie with her hands.  She leaned down to hold the harness for her, and Angie stepped into it. Peggy brought it up and tightened in with a series of gentle tugs.  She pulled Angie back into herself.  She could see in the mirror that Angie was looking down at it.  She placed her hands on Angie's stomach and let her look.  Angie held onto Peggy's arms, and when she let go, Peggy stepped back a little.

            As Angie turned around, Peggy could feel that she had gained back most of her ease and confidence.  She put her arms around Peggy's neck and kissed her.  She let her hands run down Peggy's back after to feel it, as she would have on any other day.  Peggy felt herself give a moan in response to the feel of her hands.

            She stepped back, and she could tell that Angie would follow her. So she climbed back into the bed and settled down in the middle with her head on a pillow.  Angie came in beside her and moved overtop of Peggy. Peggy felt Angie's legs pressing in between her own.  She kept their legs in close alongside one another and knew that all of Angie's focus became lost on the feel of this.  She saw her close her eyes slowly and open them with effort.  Angie slipped her hands under the edges of the pillow behind Peggy's head, as she leaned down to let their bodies come together and kiss Peggy. 

            Peggy felt her own desire flare up in her body again almost at once. Angie could feel it, and she lifted herself up a bit as Peggy opened her legs a little more. She reached down to touch Peggy again.  She grew reluctant, as she reached to bring the toy into place.  Peggy held Angie's face in her hands and kissed her to calm her nerves. She felt Angie gently working the toy into her body. 

            After a long moment, Peggy reached down to place her hands on Angie's hips. She drew her in closer to press into herself more.  Angie held herself up a bit, and Peggy felt that she was reluctant even to follow her lead at first.  As Peggy drew her in further, Angie seemed almost astonished. 

            "That much, Peg?" Angie said. 

            Peggy merely nodded.  When finally felt Angie drawn in to the precise place in her own body that she wanted, she stopped.  She had to lean back and gain her capacity for thought again.  She moved her hands against Angie's body to lead her to take up a soft movement.  Angie followed her lead this time.  She shifted her weight into Peggy, as she kept pressure in the same place and added to it in a soft and repeated movement.  Peggy let herself lay back with her hands across Angie's shoulders.

            The pleasure Angie's touch caused felt heavy somehow and held an edge that felt almost sharp in its intensity.  As they kept on, it seemed only to grow stronger.  Peggy found herself having trouble breathing and keeping her eyes open, and she tipped her head back or leaned forward into Angie's shoulder without thinking.  If she had imagined herself insatiable before, now she felt that she might go mad from this pleasure.  She could feel herself growing almost afraid, as she heard herself begin to cry out at the feel of it with sounds were deeper than usual.  Her voice held an almost raspy quality. 

            Angie turned to kiss Peggy.  She kept her mouth against Peggy's and kissed her deeply, and Peggy focused on the feel of it.  As Angie's tongue moved against her own, Peggy felt that she was drawing Angie into herself. Their kissing seemed to steady her and change the quality of the pleasure she felt to something that no longer held any threat.  Peggy merely found it difficult to tolerate such pleasure as this now.  She knew that she could allow herself to do it in Angie's arms, as she had so many times before this. 

            "Oh, Angie," Peggy said when they broke from their kissing for a moment.

            Angie held her harder when Peggy spoke her name.  She turned her face to kiss Peggy's cheek. Peggy turned after a moment, so their mouths could meet one another's again.  She felt how easy it was to kiss Angie, as their mouths moved together with a grace and tenderness that belied how deep and passionate the kisses they shared were. 

            For a moment, Peggy thought she felt herself come up suddenly into a crisis of pleasure.  She felt her back bowing, pressing her forward into Angie.  The sensations kept on, however, and she felt her voice give that same deep, unfamiliar cry.  As they kept on, Peggy felt herself let go of her inhibition and take up a willingness to follow wherever the experience would take her.  She held onto Angie and lost all other awareness except the expansive sensation of the two of them together in bed. A sweat broke out on her skin, and she felt her body trembling.  She finally knew that she was building up into a crisis of pleasure. She felt herself shake almost violently, as the sensations broke free inside of her. She knew that she made that same, deep sound as she moaned.  Angie held her hard, as she kept on pressing into her, and Peggy felt her making soft sounds of pleasure along with her own.    

            Angie held still, when she felt that Peggy came through the last waves of pleasure she could stand.  She lifted herself onto her elbows then came up onto her arm.  She reached down to press her hand to Peggy, as she drew away from her body.  Peggy felt her back arch and gave a sound at the feel of it.  It was not quite pain, but she could barely tolerate the sensation now.  Angie kept her hand pressed to Peggy's body and kneaded softly.  Peggy felt herself astonished when she felt new waves of pleasure coursing up through her lower stomach from Angie's touch. Angie noticed this, and she built her touch very slowly to one that made Peggy hold her mouth open and gasp. Peggy found herself coming up into a more familiar and tolerable extreme of pleasure and heard herself cry out in a lighter voice.  She lost all her capacity for thought for a moment and found herself astonished afterwards.

            After remaining where she was for a while, Angie moved away reluctantly. She sank over onto her side next to Peggy and turned onto her back.  They rested a moment, and Peggy turned to watch, as Angie loosened the straps and took the harness off.  She stopped to touch the lace along the edges, as if considering it for a moment.  She lay it beside her on the far side of the bed. 

            Peggy allowed her eyes to close, as she felt her heartbeat finally slowing. She heard a sound beside her that made her open her eyes and turned to see Angie was crying.  Angie reached up to press tears away from the corner of her eye.  Peggy watched her in silence for a long moment.  Somehow, she knew that Angie was not crying because she was sad.  She was crying because she felt fulfilled and had something that she wanted for a long time before this and had grown overwhelmed. She was crying for more than herself, Peggy knew.  It was for all the desire that would and would not be fulfilled in this world. Right now, she could feel the beauty and tragedy of it all, as commonplace and as significant as anything in this life could be.  Peggy could feel that same, rare awareness inside her own body just now.

            "God, Peg," Angie said after a long while passed, "Being with you is almost too much for me to take."  She was trying to make sure that Peggy understood her weeping, Peggy imagined. Peggy felt that she did not need to bother, as they always understood one another in these ways.

            "I know what you mean, darling," Peggy said.  She reached over to take Angie's hand. She felt Angie relax fully, as she got the sense that Peggy really did understand what she meant by this. She looked at Peggy in a kind of surprise still. 

            "Was it really okay, Peg?" Angie asked.  "I didn't hurt you at all?" 

            "It was great, Angie," Peggy said.  "Couldn't you tell?"

            "Yeah," Angie said as if trying to get herself to realize it more fully. Angie took a breath that shook a bit in her chest.  Peggy saw her lighten up a bit after this. 

            "I have one question for you, as well," Peggy said. 

            "Yeah," Angie said and turned to her.  Her eyes were very large and sincere in this moment.  Peggy looked long at her face in order to remember it well after this. 

            "Did Mr. Jarvis actually sew those straps for you?" Peggy said. Angie burst into laughter. Peggy lay smiling over at her. "Did he?" Peggy demanded in mock sincerity. 

            "I can only assume," Angie said.  "They're awful fancy." 

            "Wow," Peggy said.  "He really is a jack of all trades.  Some I probably can't even imagine." 

            Angie laughed fully at this.  Peggy reached to turn Angie's face towards her own and kissed her rather tenderly.  She touched her chest as she did, and it felt grown steady again.  She smiled down at Angie, as she looked over her body. They settled into a prolonged moment of quiet before Peggy spoke. 

            "Turn about is fair play, you know," Peggy said. 

            "How's that?" Angie said already smiling and wanting to get her joke.

            "If you wear it for me, I'll wear it for you sometime," Peggy said.

            Peggy could tell that Angie was surprised to hear her say this. She grinned and turned her face into the pillow, and Peggy knew that she was blushing.  She almost never got to see Angie blush, and she wanted desperately to see it.  She tried to pry her up from her place and draw her away from the pillow, and Angie resisted with a feigned severity.  She finally turned over and let Peggy see her red face. Peggy leaned in to kiss her and figured that would afford her a bit of privacy, since it would take them a nice, long time before they would stop. 


End file.
